D.J. Coffman - Sequential Artist, Thinker

It would be safe to say that I sort of took the weekend off and relaxed a bit out of the office away from the drawing board. It’s been a LOOOOONG time since that happened. So what did we do?

- On Saturday night the Mayweather/Hatton fight was on PPV, and I got hooked into watching it because of that damn HBO show “24/7″ where they show the training camps and the lead up to the fight with all the trash talking and people being real and whatnot. I liked Hatton and those folks from the UK a lot. And I really kind of despise the cocky attitude of “money mayweather” —- But the night was a wash, because the picture quality on the tv was horrible, it was advertised as “HD” but the free fights on Spike TV were a much better picture. (expect me to bitch for a refund) Seriously, it was bad. It looked like someone had taped the fight on a overused VHS tape. — Hatton lost too, which sucked. His fans are amazing to hear in the audience, chanting “There’s only one Ricky Hatton, one Ricky Hatton…” in that good ol’ UK fight song thing they do. Gotta love that. I immediately wanted to down 5 Guinness.

- Sunday of course was the “BIG GAME” — Steelers and the Patriots. On New England’s second drive, right before they scored… the fucking cable went out, but ONLY on THAT channel (CBS)– our phone also went out since we have it all on one network. I had to listen to the first half on the radio, and then the cable finally kicked back on. So it was a really crappy weekend for me being totally angry at the cable company. At least the internet didn’t go out. (knocks on wood)

- This reminds me that I have to call and ask for a damn refund, and complain about the service. I do like Armstrong Cable, but it seems odd that it only goes out at moments like that, as if some joker at HQ is messing with the masses. I’m glad I wasn’t in a sports bar watching that game! hah!

- I’ve been reading a lot online about organizing and workflow. I’m already pretty good at managing my time around with a busy household here and still getting massive amounts of work done… BUT the one thing is…. when you’re in a “zone” creatively and suddenly you are interrupted by phone calls constantly throughout the day, or emails or other things…. and unless it’s work related or close colleagues, it does end up putting you out of a creative rhythm, creative flow. I’ve found a couple good systems I might try that seem simple enough.

- One is tricky, it’s called the “Do it tomorrow” approach. Wherein you take ALL the emails from today and put them in an “action” folder and first thing tomorrow morning you get up and go through them all in one sitting, answer mails, etc. Then when you’re done, you are done with emailing for the day. Imagine that!? The only exception to the rule is important work related stuff, but I would think if something was an emergency like needed within the hour or overnight, there’s always the phone to get in contact with me pronto. You can check your mail all you want to monitor things, but if it’s not from someone super important, you file it for the tomorrow morning file. I’ve heard it can reduce your emailing time down to maybe 20 minutes a day if you do it all in one sitting, and you don’t have to muck with it again for the rest of the day—- this would be ideal for creative people who have to go and stay in that creative mode for long periods of time.

- For the first part of today I’m heading out in the world to be a consumer, and do some smaller Xmas shopping on a few things we need to pick up– Hooray.

- Also, over on the work side, we’re starting to run our “Secret Epilogue” from Hero By Night #1. Go read it starting today.

- And in plugging another good Platinum Studios title here, you can check out a good bit of INCURSION #1, by writer Jay Busbee and art by Axel Medellin Machain. And hey, it’s got a Ronnie James Dio reference in it. What more could you ask for? Check it out here!

I’m starting today’s ramble with a shout out to Adam Black, who has been a bit under the radar doing the KISS 4K webcomic. One day of the blue, the powers that be at Platinum Studios, (Dan Forcey) asked me if I knew anyone who could tackle a KISS webcomic… I turned to the ol’ Yirmumah army and the only person I could think of was the KISS boxer short wearin’ giant of a man, who also drew monsters and nekkid ladies… Adam Black.  Since then he took that ball and has run with it, and dare I say, he has done a MUCH better job on the writing and production than the actual KISS 4K print book that came out. –

And, surprise, I’m not a big fan of KISS, I guess I JUST missed the boat there or something it’s hard for a one year old to rock out, and when I was one year old in 1977, Gene Simmons wasn’t nearly the entreprenuer he is now, or I’m sure I MIGHT have actually been wearing KISS diapers or have been raised on KISS breast milk formula…. but the point is, Adam Black is doing a great job of making someone like ME, who is not a KISS fan, actually enjoying the KISS 4K webcomic! Crazy, huh? I call that success. And if I were anyone at KISS HQ or Platinum, I’d just let this madman in black have his way with the stories…. don’t believe me? Check out the latest KISS webcomic special he’s doing… BLOODSUCKERS GET COAL!!!

My old ZEN mindset kicks in a lot recently, thinking about how everything is connected out there. I enjoy sitting back and thinking about how things connect together to form some sort of weird ass destiny… leading to what though? I don’t know….. but look at Adam Black…. When I was a teenager I use to play this game called Talislanta, a lesser known even RARE RPG game. OUr gamemaster was (Andy) Andrew Zahler, a great writer, who use to also humor my art at the time and we’d work on comic story ideas and pitches, even dabbled  a little in self publishing a minicomic— one day he had me take a stab at designing new creatures for the Talislanta RPG, he was I think planning on creating a supplement to send in to them hoping to get it published. Nothing ever came of that but Talislanta was a really fun game, with great art and design, it always stuck in my mind….. cut to….

Ages later… there I am running my Yirmumah comic site and forum, and in comes this Adam Black fellow who won a subscription to the club. I don’t remember how it came up, but he told us he use to work for RPG games doing spot illustration, etc…. turns out he had just gotten done working on Talislanta. I think I pushed him at one point back then to push Talislanta as an ongoing webcomic or comic, he dug that— then I was thinking of using him to get in contact with them so maybe I could do it…. but nothing ever came of that. But Adam stuck in my mind as a really talented dude, where maybe the right projects just hadn’t come along for him.

And by the way…. Adam Black’s name is Dale. Something that took me by surprise on numerous occassions. One time he called my house and said “This is Dale.” and I was like– WHO?? WHAT??? The only Dale I know was a cousin I only talk to a funerals….

“It’s Dale! (puffs smoke, exhales like an obscene caller) It’s Adam Black!” 

I can relate… people still call me Drew Price.

There are other odd connections to the Yirmumah community that formed online… those stories for another time…

I’ve got inks to do…. plug plug plug…. read herobynight.com darn it!

Pearl Harbor Day… in case anyone actually remembers anymore. Americans are pretty busy stuffing their faces and veins with transfats and corn syrup. “Pearl Harbor? Wasn’t Ben Affleck in that movie?” Sigh.

It’s no surprise I get annoyed when I hear people bashing my publisher, Platinum Studios. I saw this article this morning from TCampbell, which focuses on everything negative from the haters opinion out there. At the end, he even predicts that Platinum Studios won’t exist next time this year. Is it his prediction, or his personal wish. Let’s not forget, for a time this year, I believe T was getting a small check from Platinum for writing through a site they owned, Broken Frontier.

That article also neglects to mention anything good Platinum has done this year. Last year the critics were saying that Platinum would NEVER actually publish books, now there has been a steady flow of new mini series and graphic novels coming out all year, including my own mini series, and our hardcover collection. Oh, and our ongoing series coming out in a couple more Wednesdays.

It sucks to read that… that people are wishing or predicting that your publisher will be gone by this time next year. For a second it makes me worry about lining up work for myself… but then remember WHO is writing it and the things they’ve predicted before. Plus, I’m privy to plans for 2008 for Platinum Studios. Most of which I legally can’t talk about, and I won’t. But in talking with the new publisher o’ comics there, Sean O’Reilly, for the first time Platinum is planning on having it’s own presence at comic conventions this year, like a booth of it’s own featuring all of it’s new projects– there’s plans in place right now to do Free Comic Book Day as a Gold Sponsor (which is huge) (you’ll see some cool Hero By Night stuff with that)– and of course I know for a fact they’re hard at work planning next year’s Comic Book Challenge 3.

Comic Book Challenge is probably one of the best things to happen to Platinum I think. (just my opinion) It’s become much more than just a contest, it’s almost a community within itself. I get emails from past finalists all the time, and I found out they’ve hired from within the top 50s a few times now, giving paying jobs to some top talents– like the guy drawing the Incursion series which looks awesome,  Axel Medellin Machain– (actually he was in the top 50 twice) 

And forget about how awesome Jason Embury and myself are with Hero By Night, Platinum has some serious talent working for them, contrary to what an aforementioned article like that would ever tell you. They’ve got solid “hot” writers like Fred Van Lente (hot as in sexy, not popular , Jay Busbee on Incursion– amazing art by Tone Rodriguez on some upcoming projects… and many more that I don’t know that I can say. Chuck Dixon just wrote one of their Xmas titles I think…

The point is I guess.. yeah, I get annoyed when outsiders don’t give it a fair shake. Platinum isn’t PERFECT… but they HAVE done a lot of good this year. I think they just had to ween out some of the kinks in their machine, unhitch any unnecessary cargo being tugged along, put in premium gas and oil and now the machine (Platinum 2.0) is actually starting to move. You can stand in the middle of the road all you want, not believing it’s going to run you over, or wishing it wasn’t really there.

Well last night I couldn’t take it anymore… the emails and comments about how awesome the hardcover collection came out, spurned me to order a copy off of ebay. There are more on there if you can’t find one in shops.

I guess not even the publisher got their copies back before the in store date, so there must have been a shipping snafu of some kind. These things happen. I couldn’t wait any longer. I have a bunch of family and friends hoping I get my own comp copies in here, just hold tight!  I was giggling on ebay when my total was 13 dollars. My lucky number.

Either way, I hear the book looks sweet and I know it will sell well for retailers, hopefully they’ll make reorders and decide to pick up our ongoing series as well (In Diamond Previews now! page 313! (another 13)

Last night I was going over to Krishna’s PC Weenies site to wish him congratulations on his new baby! But I looked down on the bottom of the screen and saw what looked like how I draw the Drama Llama from Yirmumah at the bottom in this ad…

It lead me to the webcomic Trainwreck and this strip:

And that confirmed that clearly they were drawing the Llama from Yirmumah, but was it a tribute, an ode to Llama?  Nope, no mention of it, or no link to Yirmumah. Only them renaming it as the “Trauma Llama”. Clever. The writer of said strip posted on our Yirmumah forum after I brought it up to say it wasn’t intentional on his part.

By the way, even if it was (is) intentional I’m not pissed about that. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and If my Llama was the first Llama a young cartoonist thinks of when  he gets a script that says “llama” in it, then I’ve done my job of branding that character well into the minds of readers. It kinda makes me proud.

And HEY– good luck to those guys. They’re obviously young and just starting out– while i was in “Yirmumah” mode I might have called up a drama tornado and sent the small legion of fanatical Llama followers from Yirmumah over there to wreak havoc and drama (maybe thats what they wanted to happen) — but that was all an act for drama’s sake and drama attention. I even thought a second ago, I’m not going to link those guys and send them any traffic, but that’s dumb and immature. So, go check out their comic at http://www.trainwreckcomic.com - tell them the Llama sent you.

I think being around Drunk Duck, as weird as it may sound to some of my old readers and friends, it’s really given me a sense of the beginner community, where I would have been in my early teens if such a place existed. If I would have had my high school comics that use to run in the high school newspapers, bashed by 30 year old guys with their comics in newspapers, it probably would have greatly pissed me off, and smashed my dreams a little. So I’m all about supporting ANY level of talent out there now… if you’re just beginning, or if you’re a seasoned pro— the more webcomics, the merrier.

Ok– I’ve got to get back to inking. All this talk about Llamas has me wanting to create an all Llama spinoff comic of Yirmumah. And I should nip that in the butt right now.

So I’ve gotten two emails already about seeing the book in shops today, one from Joe Dunn who says it “looks awesome!” — So if you’re looking for it, check it out at shops. Let us know what you think!

Unfortunately, I haven’t even seen the finished product yet! Neither has anyone at the office. I’m jonesing now to get my hands on one. Too bad there’s a snow storm outside or I’d try to travel to get one today.

Woke up to snow outside, we hear as much as 4 inches could come by rush hour this evening. I can’t complain though, I promised I would never complain about snow or ice again after seeing what the wildfires can do to houses and lives out west. Here on the east coast, people roll their eyes when you bring up the California fires, as if only movie stars or rich people lost homes– but I know that’s not true. Many people lost homes, lost everything. So I think about that now when I wake up to dangerous snow covered/ice roads, and I’m thankful that I don’t really have to leave the house today.

- Been awhile since we’ve had a review of Hero By Night– found this one this morning at WayoftheGeek

- My plan today for work is to letter Friday’s webcomic, then ink like a madman on a batch of pages I have waiting. I also feel like penciling up a new scene today, but we’ll see where the day takes me.

- I woke up to a mix of emotions about certain things I don’t want to talk about publicly. (surprise surprise!) One emotion was HOPE for the future, like I see some things going great. The other feeling was the feeling of being let down. Or maybe a little under appreciated. I know it’s in my head though, it’s not reality. Everything works itself out. I have to keep focusing on WORK now. I think that is the answer to overcoming paranoid mixed emotions in life in general. Bury yourself in something you enjoy doing. It could be video games, music… escape… for me it’s drawing and writing comics of course. I feel lucky that I have that.

- Speaking of comics… it would seem that the little “Hero-Cast” and blogging around again has bumped our pageviews up on the Hero By Night webcomic. One thing I can’t understand is, it seems to me that as our pageviews go up, our overall “Most read” ranking goes down on Drunk Duck. I’ve been told before it has to do with actual unique user numbers…. but it still says “Most Read”– so it’s sort of weird to check the Project Wondeful stats of Ethos which is #1 on there right now and see they only had half the page views I’ve gotten– and Charby which is consistently #1 on there, their Project Wonderful stats show that their pageviews are even lower and they’ve been knocked out of the top spot too now. I guess if it is based on unique readers, that’s fine, I must be below them, it’s something I’ll have to work on now in my promotion. I’m only bickering before coffee because it says “MOST READ” — and we’re clearly, according to pageviews, the most read comic on  Drunk Duck right now. I think that’s primarily because it seems like when we bring in a new reader there, they read a big chunk of the archives in one sitting. Going through the old comments on the strip I see a lot of those comments posted like “Wow, just found this and read it all today.” — anyways, that’s a little peek at how my marketing mind works in the morning before coffee. It’s curious. I’m not looking to knock anyone off– just a better way to spend my time pimping online and who I should be pimping to to increase new readership.

- Another thought about Drunk Duck, If I were running Platinum Studios, which owns Drunk Duck, I would utilize some of that space below the fold or under the main news posting or “MOST READ” section as a space to put in some sort of dynamic link to the Platinum store or the most recent products put up in it. Platinum has been really careful not to disrupt the community there, but I don’t think it would hurt anything pimping some of the Platinum projects somewhere on the main page. Right now I see a really poorly designed ad in the lower left for some

- The above was posted in thinking about the clear dichotomy that still exists between webcomic readers and comic book readers. (webcomic readers and comic book buyers?) — If we want more Webcomic readers to buy physical comic books or merchandise, webcomic readers are more apt to click on a link that says FOR SALE and it’s available immediately and gets to their house within two weeks. That’s why the dichotomy exists, because in the comic book market, we’re still asking people to preorder books that won’t be out for three months. I’m asking people right now to preorder our Issue 2 book which won’t be out on shelves until late February. (hopefully mid-February) –  I have a sort of grassroots promotion plan to get more webcomic readers into their local shops, and the catch is, just like online, they don’t even have to buy anything if they don’t want to. They just have to show up at their shop…. I’ll have more details at a later date, the holidays are going to be too busy to start this effort now. Bottom line though, it helps the stores, the creators AND the readers out. It won’t be a one way street anymore.

- Okay– these comic pages aren’t going to ink themselves. Off to face the day!

A quick pet peeve this morning… I notice a lot of comics put out press releases saying that their book is “sold out at the distributor!” — which probably reads like that is super successful or awesome to outsiders, or friends and family. It’s definitly a BS spin tactic in comics, that everyone IN comics knows is BS. It sounds as though these books have sold TONS of books, when I’ve seen titles that release this statement, then I wait and look at the final Diamond numbers when they’re released and you see they only sold 2000 copies. It’s technically “selling out at the distributor” though when there are no books left because you’re printing a small amount of books. A clever spin though.

I wouldn’t feel right putting out a press release saying Hero By Night sold out at the distributor, although that would be the case.  One look at the top selling comics tells me over and over again that even the big books at Marvel and DC are selling low compared to what it could/should be.

Here’s a first. I was down mailing some things out at the post office, and I was walking across a crosswalk, with a green light and the right of way, and this big red Ford truck comes barreling down the road with it’s turn signal on, so I decide to jog a bit so I’m not in the way, and the guy speeds up into the turn and BARELY misses me. Within an inch at least, and he was watching me the whole time. He was probably in his 60s– from the looks of it he was probably a foreman of a construction type business or something, didn’t catch the name on the truck if there was one. But the guy, after speeding up an barely hitting me as he watched, then slows down to glare at me in his rear view mirror– to which I gave him the universal “WTF!?” Hand gestures and started walking toward his vehicle…. he sped off. I was locked and loaded to give him a piece of my mind, with something like:

“Hey, aren’t you old enough to know that pedestrians have the right of way on a crosswalk? And hell, dude, I was even hurrying up so you could make the turn at a SAFE speed. Now I’m gonna have to stick my foot in your ass, old man!”

Ah, morning in Scottdale.