D.J. Coffman - Sequential Artist, Thinker

Rise...and shine

So our trip to Washington, DC was great. I’ve found myself in sort of a weird dilemma, because while I’m friends with the Flobots and work with them on some amazing things, we’re also uber fans of the music. So sometimes I’d find myself looking over at my wife with like a “can you believe any of this?” and she’d give me the crazy look back. The uber fan in me wants to run and tell you how we had all access, hanging out in the green room (which was blue), and post videos and photos to prove I was there, as if I had been hanging out backstage at a Pearl Jam concert, that’s how exciting the feeling was…. but the dilemma then becomes, well… they’re my friends! So there are moments captured that are private, or just for our family and own minds. When they leave, we’re sad to see them go. It’s good to be working with very down to earth people who see a bigger picture, and LOVE what they do. If you want the fan experience, you can see a nice writeup review of the show over on the Evolving Music Blog.

There are also a bunch of photos up, some showing us in the private balcony above the stage. That was FUCKING AWESOME! (sorry, the fan slipped out) - I did get some video, but the only one I’ll likely share publicly here is the “Jetpack” song, because I think that’s my favorite song.

Speaking of Jetpack… I can now show off some of the shirt designs I’ve done for them. The first one completely sold out for them on tour and they’re trying hard to get them back in stock for the big shows coming up… here be the designs:

Are you fueled by another engine? Flobots Jetpack shirt

If you are thinking you are winning

Bandanna Shirt

So, yeah, that was a complete trip looking out at a screaming crowd and seeing people wearing and buying these t-shirts. I guess they are doing really well. For now, you’ll have to catch them at a show to buy them, but I reckon they will try to have them online too when busyness calms down a tad.

I also presented them with the FIRST Flobots art cards featuring their own robots, and they loved them. We’ll be making limited runs of individually numbered Flobot designs that will be available to the public, and the proceeds will go to support the non-profit work. They are cool as heck, and fun to do.

Wow… it was just a really good time. I don’t know how they’re doing it with their energy levels… but it’s all very inspiring.

My wife and I also got to tour around DC a bit on Monday. That’s an awesome place. We were told how “dangerous” it was, and to be so careful, but our trip was awesome, and the people in DC couldn’t be nicer, in my opinion. Everywhere can be “dangerous”, your own backyard! But seeing some of the monuments up close, and even the white house– I never thought i would be inspiring as well. We joked that checking out the white house was so cool, you don’t even think about the dillweed who currently lives there. I guess it’s just the history of the whole place. The war memorials stir emotions around. I felt like I shouldn’t be just, passing by a bunch of names on a wall, almost as if I shouldnt be in there at all because I don’t have a family member or friend on that wall… but seeing the people who DO… scratching the names, children touching the wall, old men crying there… it was lumps in the throat action. I enjoyed the Vietnam vets who were there on park benches who would just randomly tell people what certain statues were about. We live in a lucky time to hear from our veterans. Could you imagine touring Gettysburg to hear old soldiers telling their tales?

Now, radio silence from me… I have about 400 drawings to get moving on and counting for the Will Draw Anything program.

I’ve gotten some concerned emails from people asking what’s up, noticing I haven’t blogged as much or visited my usual internet haunts, or been on messenger lately. Nothing is wrong, I’m just busy! Beyond having about.. oh, 400 and counting Will Draw Anythings to do, my main job has been working on things with the Flobots, and has expanded beyond just drawing comics, as they’ve hired me on to take care of some other things behind the scenes to help out, and I’m more than happy about that.

Sunday, I’m heading down to Washington DC with my wife to meetup with the band again, just to hang, see a show,  plot future plans perhaps… I’m working on something behind the scenes that’s going to take awhile, but i’m very happy about it. The character designs are just…. FUN. I’ve sort of learned my lesson, and this is going to be something I have a bigger stake and ownership in, and we’re going to go beyond just the comic market, and also do actual GOOD THINGS with it, be it supporting children’s hospitals or homes, to other worthy charities. I’d also like to get something together that supports our troops overseas. There should be some new official shirt designs coming out with my work on it, and my art is also ALL OVER the new Flobots RISE video that’s coming sometime this month I believe. I’ve seen a sneak peek and man… it’s just awesome. I can’t begin to again say how surreal this season has been…. ups and downs, and very downs, but back on top of the world now. This is the start of something new, and better…

If I haven’t responded to personal emails from friends, forgive me, like I said, 400 or so drawings to do and counting! Those have been great fun to do. Sure it’s intimidating thinking of all the stuff stacked up, but I love pushing myself and keeping my brain sharp. All of these happy accidents, from the Flobots, to the WillDraws are making me a better person all around.

If you missed it– the first chapter of the Flobots Comic is done… chapter two is being reworked now with an issue we want to bring to the front, it wasn’t planned yet, but I’m moving it up because it needs to take center stage. I’ll probably launch that in a couple weeks, and try to stick to the M-F updates, of FULL comic pages.

Someday, when I’m dead and gone, please tell your friends and children about how you once knew of a man who drew this much stuff all at once, and never needed sleep… and he could crush bricks with his bare hands.

Today is “cat gets fixed day!”- No longer will I have to hold him up like a prisoner in my basement and go and give him super treatment, or his daily fitness regimine. Hopefully after today the vulcan-like anger/passion will subside as he wonders…. hey, where did my balls go?

Yesterday was my son Dillon’s birthday. We had a special surprise lined up for him, and that’s all I’m going to say about that. That and THANKS to Jamie, we’re the coolest parents in the gosh darn world right now.

I CANTZ FEELZ MY LEGZ!!!! - Well, I can feel them. But there is a weird tingling numbness on my upper thighs above the knee, feels like very light pins and needles. In my brilliant self diagnosis (see, no health insurance for myself) I’ve deduced that the problem is a side effect of my previous lower back sprain a couple weeks go, wherein I still have a pinched nerve or crink of some kind. Doesn’t help that I’ve been sitting a lot lately, so I’m going to try to get some exercise every night at the kids football practice by walking the track and doing some stretches in the morning.  The numbness is mildly annoying, but I can’t complain too much, I have good friends who have lost legs or are stuck in wheelchairs who are some TOUGH mofos– so they should punch me in the nuts if I’m ever complaining about such things. Of to which, I am not. (sorry, about the rambling deadwood-speak)

WHat else… what else… I’ve been thinking about some complicated political issues lately. In my new side job, I’m hearing a lot of differing opinions about the war. Some people feel like the Flobots “don’t support the troops” or they’re just an anti-establishment band or something, but this couldn’t be farther from the truth. At all of their full sets, they mention the war, but also say no matter how you feel about it we need to support the troops there, pray for them and not just pull them out lickity split, but bring them home responsibly and not leave a vacuum behind. It’s a very tricky, delicate thing, and politics poured on top of it like gravy doesn’t help. I’m not very masterful in diplomatically speaking my mind, when I get an email that’s like “FUCK YOU! I HATE YOU!” I usually delete it and don’t respond. Years ago, I’d maybe write something witty back to make the person angrier, using my amazing passive aggressive superpowers. But I’ve witnessed some pretty tough conversations lately that really make you think about all sides of an issue. Where are people coming from? And the fact that there’s never just two sides to a story, there can be 3 or 4, 100. My friend Jamie seems to have a mastery of this, an easy intuitiveness that’s dead on in most cases. In the lyrics to some of their songs, they write about how words are more powerful than bombs, the pen mightier than the sword, etc… they don’t just talk that talk, I’ve seen the walk. It’s amazing how the right choice of words in what could spiral out into a VERY bad situation, can totally disarm and calm.

Anyways, thinking about all of this stuff is inspiring to me at best. At worst, it makes me want to get out and do more, and that’s not such a bad “worst”. My goal is to somehow be to put a little of that magic into my work somehow. Behind the scenes, I’m creating something special based on all of these things… something that blows the doors off of other stuff I’ve done in the past year or so.

“Change the SWORDS to WORDS and lift continents”, indeed.

_______________

ON a lighter side– the Will Draws keep going along. I’m off to work on some of those post haste. I think I have about… somewhere like 400 waiting to do, and more keep filing in as I go. I have to thank people for their patience, if this were my full time thing, I’d be getting them out a lot quicker. My MAIN goal this week are the WIll Draws. I’m still on orders that came in around the 18th-19th, which was when we had the link on the Whedon blog. After that, I’m cranking into the Seth and Metafilter rush of orders. So crazy! It’s so much fun though! I really do want to collect them all now into one book or something just for fun too. I have a folder on my iphone, they fit perfect and they are awesome to scan through. You know the years and years I did comic strips, in newspapers and on the web, I never really liked to go back and “admire” and enjoy my work, I liked it when I was in the moment drawing it, but could never go back and feel the same way, in fact, i’d go back and realize how boring I’d drawn the talking heads in lame black and white comic strip, almost looking like copy-paste (the kind you see in a lot of online webcomics)– but with these little random things, they are SO much fun to go look back on, just the variety of things I get to draw… I swear, my mind just shuts off, because I come across some and I don’t even remember drawing them, it’s like I’m looking at the drawing for a first time again. You don’t really get that feeling in the day in and day out production of a comic strip. It’s no wonder most of those guys grow to be socially crippled and jaded as they feed that monster.

Last week felt like a BUST workwise, and not to mention more work pouring in for commissions and the WillDrawAnythings (which I’d better get working on so I’ll make this fast!)

All sorts of things going on on the homefront, my wife’s stepmother who she just went on vacation with has had an apparent heart attack and is in the hospital.  I guess she had the heart attack while in the hospital, but still, pretty scary stuff. We’re hoping she gets better soon.

Our planned trip to Washington DC to see and meet with the Flobots might be a little tricky to pull off, but I’m hoping the universe aligns and allows all things to be corrected. I was looking forward to grabbing some video clips and other stuff down in DC.

Soooo… I have about a bajillion WillDraws to attend to this week, and I’d better go get started on that. It’s really brought up a plethora of business requests and commission requests, and things have been very very busy… but busy is good! I haven’t thought about anything that was getting me down in a good long while, and actually, when the things do creep into mind, they seem small and petty, and it feels like I’m five steps beyond it all. So that feels pretty good.

To the drawing board!!!

Only 24 hours to snag up the Hulk Cover art I did for Hero Initiative and Marvel. It’s for a worthy cause!

I just realized, a year ago tonight, I was being toasted on the roof of a hotel overlooking San Diego Comicon, and had a bunch of people kissing my ass. It meant absolutely NOTHING in the long run, and most of the nice things said by some people were obviously a bunch of lip service.

I can’t say I’d rather actually be anywhere other than right here in my studio tonight…

Day four of I’M ALL ALONE WITH NO ADULTS TO TALK TO! — I’m missing my wife hardcore here, but trying to bury myself in work so I don’t think about it too much. Geez, it seems like this week of all weeks there has been so much stuff to deal with all on my own, and it sucks GIANT ASS. My oldest son had his tonsils out last week, so he’s on a medicine regimine, my cat decided to bust into crazy Vulcan like HEAT where he goes nuts and sprays on everything and wants to challenge me with those pungle sticks (play kirk vs spock theme music here) - And it’s also the first week of football practice for my two sons, usually from 6-8 Monday through Friday… I’ve brought multi-tasking to a whole new fucking level… but WOW… am I freakin tired. Right now all I can think of doing is going in and sitting down on the couch and watching ghost hunters or something recorded on DVR, but alas…. there’s work to do! I’ve been staying up until about 2am every night… not on purpose, it just creeps up on me.

Uhm….. the Will Draw Anythings have reached a new level of crazy. First I got linked by one of my favorite authors, Seth Godin, and that turned into a link on metafilter.com shortly after…. and before I knew it, I had oh, I don’t know… 300 something odd orders coming in, and counting. Not to mention requests for side jobs, logos, commissions and all sorts of stuff. THere are brief moments where I feel like I may have made a BIG mistake in opening that up to the public, but hey, as long as people are patient for their $2 drawings, all is well! Every time I look at my inbox, I kinda giggle maniacally to myself. I might be looking for a REAL publisher to take these on as a collected book or something. They’re so fun to look back on, and people seem to really be getting some enjoyment out of them.

On top of all of those zany WillDraws…. I’m of course planning more Flobots work, and there are things going on behind the scenes that are very interesting. I have a new format and update schedule and general management thing I want to do… I can’t talk much about it, just keep watching. Speaking of that… I gotz to go finish an update! Chapter one should be ending very soon…. next two updates are so….

I’m out!

Thought I’d embed this here. It’s so true, it’s almost painfully depressing, but funny as hell.

Just getting around to the net today. Was up most of the night with my dog who was scared shitless over the storm we had. It was pretty loud, maybe the loudest thunder and lightning I’ve ever heard in recent memory. Sounded like bombs going off in my yard. Oddly though, I found the sound soothing and could have just slept through it. My kids did. The dog didn’t… so…. late start.

I’ve been the topic of conversation between my friend Al Nickerson and Dave Sim over creator rights issues, something both are passionate about and write about extensively. Dave refers to me as “The DJ Coffmans of the world”, in regard to just selling my work away to companies, or as if to infer that that’s all I have an interest in doing. I know he meant it generally and I don’t take offense to that, I think the world knows that Dave Sim is an opinionated fellow. I’ve been an admirer of his work for some time, and sometimes I scratch my head when I hear some of the quotes about mysogeny or religious views… but other times he’s brilliant. He did the self publishing world a great service in publishing his guide to self publishing in the back of Cerebus comics way back… when? Jesus, I’m getting old? Nah! Anyways, I wanted to clear something up about my view on “creator rights”, because I’m surely not against it at all.

Creator rights to me, use to be about, well OWNING your work, complete control. But there’s more to it than that as well. A code of ethics, the ways creators should be paid, and how creators should also be professional towards their publishers, back and forth. Most of which, I’ve broken into a million pieces by just telling the truth or my honest opinion. All many people know of me is Hero By Night, and the fact I sold it away, but I did so willingly because well, I wanted to make money. Some people still argue that when you do that, it’s a one time thing and you’re done, and years from now they’ll make zillions and you get nothing . Some cases that’s true in the past, but it’s not the case with my deal, and that’s why I went toe to toe with so many people criticizing my deal. Even though Platinum probably HATES me now, i’m still connected to Hero By Night and I’ll benefit from anything they do with it in the future. Sure, maybe they’ll shelve it for good, but I reckon if the chance to do anything in tv/film came along, they’d jump at it because, well, it’s business and they’d want to recoup some of their investment on it, and turn a profit. And when or if they do anything with it, I get a cut. That’s why I always felt like this was a MUCH better deal than Jack Kirby or other godfathers of comics got. They got NOTHING but headaches and heartbreaks. So at least it’s SOMETHING.. it’s one thing that’s out there somewhere, for better or worse.

And to any of my detractors who despise me, or ramble on about how bad it was for me to do, I’ve not ignored the things you’ve said. It’s actually got my brain itching to do full on creator owned stuff again, and you’re partly right. And luckily, I’m not a one trick pony, and I have plenty of concepts I’d like to explore that I’m being way more cautious with in the future. Even though this ended rough, it was a good experience for me, I learned a lot.  For now, unless it’s drawing other peoples characters for like Marvel or DC or some other writer’s project, I’m pretty much leaving Work-For-Hire alone. I won’t work work for hire on things I created and that other people own.  I don’t regret doing it, I just won’t do it again any time soon.

So, Mr. Sim doesn’t have to worry about the “DJ Coffmans” of the world making his job harder, because I think they might actually make it easier… and well, to my knowledge, there’s only ONE me. And I’ll be off somewhere creating fun comics.

Well I looked over the new Wowio contract with Platinum’s new items listed in the contract amendments and I’m going to have to pass on it, here’s why.

There will be new multiple ways for you to monetize your content, let’s take a look at the actual text and I’ll give you my own personal beefs with it.

1.      AMENDMENTS TO AGREEMENT.  The terms and provisions of the Agreement are hereby amended as follows:

1.1    EXPANSION OF GRANT OF RIGHTS.  In addition to the grant of rights by Publisher under the Agreement, Publisher hereby grants and conveys to WOWIO the following rights in and to the Content:

The right to display page images derived from Content for free in a web browser with interactive display advertising (“PREVIEW”).

* BOOM. Right off the top you’re essentially giving them the right to use the content inside your ebooks as pretty much “webcomics” that they’ll monetize by selling advertising and boost their pageviews. They go on to say they’ll give you 20% of any advertising made, more on that in a bit…

Publisher shall have the option through the Publisher account interface to make “Ebooks” eligible for sale and to set a sale price (“ECOMMERCE OPTION”). If Publisher elects to activate the Ecommerce Option, Publisher hereby grants Company the right to sell Ebooks without embedded advertising. The default setting for this option is “inactive”.  For purposes of the Agreement “Ebooks” shall mean self-contained electronic files, one format of which shall be Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format.

* The thing that made Wowio work in the first place was free downloads. If I’m going to sell PDFs to my fans I can do that myself direct over my own website. Sure there will be creators and publishers who don’t know how to do this, and this will seem like an easy service to use, but you’ll be giving up HALF of your sales to them. 50/50 just seems ridiculous to me, and in my own personal opinion there is no market for selling these ebooks, other people have tried and failed miserably.

Publisher shall have the option through the Publisher account interface to make Ebooks eligible for free distribution with embedded advertising when sponsors are available (“SPONSORSHIP OPTION”). If Publisher elects to activate the Sponsorship Option, Publisher hereby grants Company the right to distribute Ebooks for free with embedded advertising. The default setting for this option is “active”.

*”When” Sponsors are available? What happens when sponsors aren’t available? That seems really vague. Who’s going to be in charge of getting sponsors now? Platinum?!? UGH.

1.3    ROYALTIES.  Schedule A to the Agreement is hereby deleted in its entirety, and the following shall constitute the Royalties payable to Publisher under the Agreement:

For revenues derived from Preview, Publisher shall receive 20% percent of the quarterly gross advertisement revenue generated by interactive display advertising on pages that contain page images from Publisher’s Content.

* This was what set off alarm bells in my head initially. So, they’ll be using your content to generate pageviews that you have no way of accessing, nor do you know how much advertisers are paying, so you have to just trust whatever they say you made off of pageviews without any system of checks and balances mentioned. In light of Platinum Studios telling me that Hero By Night only generated 800 bucks in ad revenue for a webcomic that has been online since October 2006 and consistantly had the HIGHEST pageviews on all of Drunk Duck… I don’t have faith that they can either A. figure out real well paying advertisers, or B. tell the truth about how much they actually made off of web advertising revenue. You might find yourself in the same position of asking… wait, we had all these pageviews and we only made 50 bucks this quarter? — and they’ll say something like, Well, that was the going CPM…  better luck next time. I also don’t think it’s an accident that they’re only willing to cut YOU in on 20% of their web revenue… but hey, why wouldn’t they cut you in on 50% of that? I mean, they want 50% of YOUR ebook. That just doesn’t seem well thought out at all, and it smells bad to me.

For revenues derived from Ecommerce Option, Publisher shall receive 50% percent of the quarterly gross revenue generated by sales of Ebooks of the Publisher’s Content.
For revenues derived from Sponsorship Option, Publisher shall receive (i) 50 cents ($0.50 USD) per download for eTexts of less than 100 pages; and (ii) One dollar ($1.00 USD) per download for eTexts of 100 pages and above.
All Royalties shall be paid to Publisher on a quarterly basis, within 45 days following the end of each calendar quarter.

* Couple things here... again, the thought of splitting 50/50 profits on an ebook sale with anyone is ridiculous to me. And the part about when you’re SUPPOSED to be paid, turns my stomach a little in the light of the situation I was in with Platinum. I’m guessing everything will go smoothly during the “transition” period when the old Wowio people are still managing things.. but when the keys are handed over to Platinum, I’ve got a BADDDddddddd feeling about people being paid on time. That’s not an assumption, that’s a proven fact, regardless of the articles written about creators owed, printer representives telling me they were owed and COMIC BOOK NEWS sites telling me they were owed money… and the Drunk Duck kids over there, there was a bunch of “mobile wallpaper” people never paid. I have a really good friend who had his wallpapers up through their service before, and when he asked, he was told that “none sold” but he knew better because his own family had boughten them from the site!!!! — Anyways, THAT’S who will be running this shindig now. That’s who owns them. You have been warned.

To end things off… even if I wanted to stay on under Wowio with my other ebooks I had there… I got a follow up email asking to FAX the form in signed ASAP so they could get it back to me. I think someone in management is out of touch, because not that many comic creators have fax machines these days. It almost sounded to me like if there was a contest and you needed to send in videos, they’d ask for VHS. That’s neither here nor there. I mean… you’d think Wowio would say, get us a signed PDF file… right? Maybe they don’t know how to sign it and send it back? Who knows….

Anyways, that’s why I’m bailing. Had it not been for Platinum being involved and buying them out, maybe I’d be able to trust the system a little bit more. I’d have more faith in Wowio too if they hadn’t actually, well, basically if you look at it, they PAID Platinum to buy them out with shares. That doesn’t sound like a company that was doing very well for itself, and they must not have had many more offers if they settled with Platinum, a company in the midst of a bunch of public money trouble. That’s not inside information, that’s public information that anyone can look up at the SEC.gov site.

Good luck to everyone.