D.J. Coffman - Sequential Artist, Thinker

Yesterday seemed like a way stressful day for some reason. But when I woke up today, the stress had melted away. Maybe it’s just been because of a lack of sleep on my end, I feel on edge or agitated lately. The little cat seems to wake me up by biting my legs in the middle of the night, so the interruptions of sleep are probably making me crankier in the morning, then it stretches through the day or something. ANYWAY– feeling much better this morning, even though I was woken up at 1am, 4am, 6am and about 7am before the alarm went off. JOY! Thanks kitty.

- The direct comic book market is a confusing thing to regular people out there. Even moreso to webcomic readers who are use to just opening up their browsers and theres the comic. If they buy merchandise, it’s because its available at that very moment. I’ve had many examples over the past year of a webcomic reader, or non-familiar new reader trying to figure out how to go about preordering Hero By Night at their shops and me trying to explain it to them over the email. But it boils down to this… you’re asking individuals to order something, maybe even pay for something today, that’s coming to shops in THREE MONTHS. That’s like forever on the internet!—- We live in a microwave, “instant” society now, and I think it’s time the comic book distribution system caught up a little bit to that. We’re still doing things like it’s 1989.

-  Utterz = Hero-Cast– Utterz.com is a newer mobile podcasting sort of service I found, I think through Robert Scoble’s blog first. I’ve been wanting to do some sort of mini podcast or “Hero-Cast” just about all things Hero By Night– maybe a virtual mailbag where I answer readers questions– and its all done through the phone which is neat. I could even call Jason Embury or James Patrick in a conference type call and we could maybe do mini interviews or talk on different genre related topics. Anywho, it will autopost the utterz entries here and on herobynight.com in a little mini player.

- Xanga — Xanga was my FIRST blog online, back in 2000. They’ve recently upgraded their site and templates and offer a lot more dynamic modules and things… like I could have a little feed for the latest comics there. It almost has me tempted to move my main blog back over to there now— hmmmmmmmmm…. the only problem, the username there is still “Gravity”– for way back when the blog was just about our old daily comic strip. I do like my own wordpress blog here…. who knows. If I do move the personal blog, you’ll read about it here, of course.

- Running to the comic shop today to pick up a Previews. I hear we have our Hero By Night #2 in it, with a big full page ad of THIS cover:

Yep… Saul Simian is back. If you don’t know who that is… you might want to read his ORIGIN comics over at herobynight.com -  And hey, why not ask a local retailer to carry the Hero By Night ongoing series? It kicks butt.

- Speaking of Saul… ol’ collaborator, and man of action, Brian Lynch posted a reply about the cover yesterday saying it’s his favorite. Saul is one of my favorites to draw because well, he’s sort of like Brian’s Monkey Man character if he had been bit by a werewolf and injected with steroids! Man, do any of you remember Monkey Man?? If not, there’s still the old teaser site up… http://www.angrynakedpat.com/MMU/site/teasers.html — those were fun days.

- It’s 9:07am … I’m off to face the day.

This day got crappier and crappier. I say it’s time we put this day to bed, dear sirs!!!

The only thing that did go right, was I was able to show 5 new Hero By Night pages to the team, and actual drawing and creating went fine.  Now i think I’m going to go watch snakes on tv or the football game or something– I need a Mojito and a hug!!!!!!!

Just one of those moods today where nothing seems to be going right. Don’t you hate those days? I just deleted a rambling, confusing rant about the direct comic book market. It’s not even worth confusing normal readers over.

SIGH. I need a nap. Amongst other things.

I always thought Myspace was annoying. I still do. I avoid it like the plague and consider it a place mostly for people who don’t know any better. I found Facebook and it seemed more protected against CRAP and annoying stuff. When I first launched my Facebook profile, it was fun. And I didn’t mind having  a few select applications running there– oh it was funny and cute to have a pirate ship and bomb your friends… but then months went by… Facebook has become more and more popular and application invites have become annoying, and now Facebook is allowing non-individuals to have pages, like bands, etc…

So it might be another social network I abandon soon. Especially after reading Hugh’s post, which echoes something I’ve been thinking for awhile about my annoyance with facebook…. why don’t they have an option that says not to include me when people hit “mark all” to invite all of their friends to a new stupid Werewolf/Vampire/Zombie/Pirate/Hunter type application? — Hugh suggests over on GapingVoid.com,  that it’s starting to feel like they don’t want to do that, because they’re rather have you spending time with pageviews either ignoring the requests, or playing the silly games–  And I’ve been thinking that, with my paranoid marketing mind.

What I really need is a social network for hermits. Someone build that.

I forgot to blog today. I slept in after staying up to watch the Steelers NOT lose to the Dolphins. WHEW! That was the messiest field I have ever seen in a football game. I thought for sure we’d be the laughing stock of the NFL this morning.

I woke up and got right to work on new HBN pages for the ongoing series. I penciled 3 pages today and lettered 2 strips. I wanted to get 4 pages penciled but I had to stop and do some design work on an old grandmother who appears in issue 2– and it kept coming out looking like my wife’s grandmother, and that was bugging me to no end- UGH! I learned something though by happy accident–with just a few lines and placements on the faces and slashy eyes, all old fat people start to look a lot alike!

- I’ve had some people ask me about doing commissions and stuff– I don’t have time right now, but I appreciate the offers. I also had some people ask via email if I’d ever do some sort of “sketchbook”– but I thought to myself, damn, I might need to actually have sketches first. As it stands now, I don’t like to do a lot of drawing that doesn’t actually get used in production on the strips or the comic books. But I REALLY should try to sketch something up each morning as a warmup or something. Maybe put those together in some sort of yearly sketchbook or something, and sell the originals to readers online. That way when the book is published, they can say they own one of the numbered sketches in it. That sounds like a neat idea to me– But again– it’s been a LONG time since I’ve just sat and sketched for fun.  We’ll see how it goes.

- We put our palm tree christmas tree up today. I like it.  My oldest son said to me– “Awh, man. Why can’t we have a REAL Christmas tree.” — to which I replied that we actually have one in the shed, but this one looks cooler and has more room under it for presents. He agreed with me after that. Go figure.

-  It feels good being drama free. Ahhhhhh….

Been a busy day here of writing and stuffage.

- Thanksgiving break was fun. The kids are still off until Wednesday– never been in a school district where kids get 7 days off!?! WTF?! Overall though it’s been a relaxing holiday. Things I should have been stressed about, just faded away and were unimportant in the grand scheme of things. We also pretty much got Xmas shopping out of the way for the kids, which will be the first time we were done this early. Wii!

- Woke to do some work on project X, which might be going through some tweaking soon. It happens. I actually re-read the entire script and I’m pretty happy with it, there are some parts I think that can be plucked out to insert new scenes to set a new tone. Right now it’s more of a lighthearted, dark humor thing, but I think it’s solid and would sell well as is.

- That brings me to a new thought– I’m afraid of overthinking characters TOO much, because then they begin to become predictable and there are no surprises. While it’s great to know the character you’re writing and where they are coming from, you don’t really need to know all of their likes and dislikes and everything about them. One of the best things I learned from Robert McKee’s book and course on screenwriting was that you don’t need to know everything, just the the things that help the plot progress. I’ve been involved with some things in the past where more was written before hand about character designs then ever was actually conveyed in a book—- so the real trick is pulling that off within a script giving the character a distinct attitude and voice, while not making them say convenient things for the reader to learn things about them. Too many comics and graphic novels do that too and it makes them seem “convenient” or rushed to me.

- That brings me to another thought about writing and creating… hearing the voices. When you’re writing, you of course hear these characters in your head as they talk to one another. It’s not something that can be taught in a class,  you have to learn it by listening and studying real conversations and reactions, and many many of them. You can’t learn this from watching other movies or reading other comics either. Eavesdropping is best, or just studying how different characters in the real world interact with each other. I think this is why I started to become comfortable around people I wouldn’t usually want to hang out with. Grumpy old people, or inlaws, or assholes, or know it alls. You can sit and listen to them… but do you HEAR them?

- James Patrick called today, we went over the next big story arc after the next two for the Hero By Night ongoing book. Basically talking about things that will happen in issue 8-10—- Issue 7 which is scheduled to land next December I’m thinking of having it as a nice year end wrap up issue with three 16 page stories inside– one is the continuing timeline story, one is a fun Xmas story, and the other is sort of a neat recap of the ring’s powers and history which will answer any questions the fans might have throughout the year in the webcomic, etc. — Jim and I are really excited about the direction we’re going with this— Having Jim onboard is great for me, because I’m use to throwing everything but the kitchen sink into a book or story, but Jim is good at telling me something is happeneing too soon, or that we’re actually building for something that should come first in our storyline concepts. Sorry to be so vague, but i don’t want to ruin it! — I will say for anyone interested, things will all tie back into the current adventure going on at HerobYnight.com - Check it out.

- That’s it– I’m off to get back to work!  Steelers play the Dolphins tonight, and they’d better not be the first team to lose to the Dolphins this year!!! I won’t be pleased.

CONSUME!!! Throughout the years I have celebrated Black Friday as “BUY NOTHING DAY” (see site link) - but this year I went with my wife to make sure she didn’t get trampled by dumb hillbillies who have come down from their mountain perches to find the best deals available (or so the Germans would have us believe!)

Our story for shopping begins with the fact that our kids all wanted Nintendo DS’s. BUT they believed that Wii was out of the question because none can be found. Last night I checked out Sams Club website and found that Sams would have “Wii Family Bundles” on sale at their stores, limited one per club member. So I made an executive decision to make that our first stop to see if we could get one. I was expecting to see a line out the wazoo, but was pleased when it was just about 20 people inside the heated area of Sams Club. They actually opened about 10 till 5am and handed out Wii scanner bars to the people waiting for em– so like that, we were pretty much out of the store with a big Wii bundle. Hooray. We then scooted over to the Walmart super center place, and it was a madhouse.

This was the scene at the Walmart in Greensburg, PA, as I tried to make my way from Electronics over to toys to find my wife.

People packed through every aisle of that damn store as far as the eye could see. Without a cart, I was like a ninja scooting in and out while others waited with their loaded down carts.

One thing that baffled me at the checkout line, most people had carts full of crap that wasn’t even on sale! Marshmellow fluff and grocery items– it was as if people believed Armageddon was coming and were loading down on EVERYTHING as if it would be there tomorrow. I can’t really grasp the stupidity level I felt there. Maybe not for those people, but maybe that I was there in the thick of it witnessing the chaos– and I was nervous because I had a Wii Bundle hiding in the back our car. Did someone follow us from Sams Club to rob us!? oh noes!

It was still before 6am, so my wife and I decided to scoot down the highway to check out toys r us and Best Buy– what we witnessed there made Walmart look like a kiddie pool, there were lines waiting outside in front of both Best Buy and ToysRus at least a BLOCK long or more. Some lines stretched across parking lots, blocking traffic— we both let out an amazing “Oh my god! FUCK THAT!!!” And we decided to go treat ourselves to breakfast at Bob Evans. Mmmmmm…

While checking out there, we noticed those little “Remember When?” books with your birth year on it. My wife picked up 1979 and found this magnificent ad for SPAM. “How to make a Spam sandwich.”

Wow. That’s all I can say.

Happy Black Friday everyone.