D.J. Coffman - Sequential Artist, Thinker

 I’ve been quietly working on some “educational” type comics for Platinum Studios, we’ve sort of co-branded these with Hero By Night, making this particular age group called “Hewo By Night” - Anyways, I have 5 pages to ink up today on a rush deadline. I’m on page 3 now, here’s a peek.

“Hewo” started as a little sketch by Brandon J. Carr in my sketchbook at Wizard World Chicago. (by the way, check out Brandon’s new strip!)

In other news, Fleen linked here, in reporting that I was done with Yirmumah.  Awh, thanks Gary! Gary Tyrell has the MEANEST MUSTACHE on the east coast. He reminded me that I said I’d draw Yirmumah until I’m dead– which I’m still fond of that idea… but for now– 10 years is enough of that for now. Plus, I’m kinda sick of the douchebaggery around “webcomics” at the moment. I participated in it, for sure, because it’s fun. I think people should just go and be cartoonists and produce GOOD (maybe important?) work before sticking their flags in the moon. Of course, I never really have ever taken a break of any kind for a long long time. This pencil is always moving.

Thinking about the web stuff yesterday– I thought how crazy it is. Just because ANYONE can publish their comics now, doesn’t make them good, notable… or it doesn’t mean they SHOULD. I saw a couple blogs about SPX, where people were saying comic “pamphlets” were dead. (RRRRrrr I hate that word) But the reason they thought that was because the art and mini comics around them were selling like hotcakes. I love SPX for that too, but it was odd to hear an independent publisher say he was abandoning the format completely because of the SPX experience, and claiming said things to be dead… but you look at his work, and it’s clearly something that Comic Shops would never pick up… but back to the point about the web… I guess it does make people feel like they are EQUAL to the big publishers or level of quality. That might be true in like VERY few cases… but for most people, they’re just lying to themselves. But hey, if they LOVE comics so much, they’ll find it to be an AWESOME hobby. Just because you CAN publish… doesn’t mean you should.

That’s the flipside I suppose… I love WEBCOMICS for finding those diamonds in the rough. Unfortunately there’s always going to be a whole lot of “rough”.