D.J. Coffman - Sequential Artist, Thinker

The money fairy came on Saturday. Hooray. Now I can get caught up on all of my outstanding bills. UGH. I’m going to have to stay on top of that stuff more so that doesn’t happen again. February has NOT been a fun month, and it’s kinda hard to put that stuff out of your mind and be creative.

Woke up semi-early I guess, 7am or so? Was at the gym by 7:30, it’s only like 5 minutes away so that’s not bad. Wasn’t too busy either, I think the earlier I can get in there, the better– right around 8am it starts to get busier and busier. Spent about 45 minutes in there, I missed one machine because some old guy was planted on it, so I just did a little extra on another similar machine. My arms feel like crap… but I keep telling myself it’s good for me.

I did something else a little tedious this morning, I don’t want to say what so I don’t jinx anything– but I will say this. If you’re ever worried in your head that something important to you isn’t going to get done properly by someone else who’s supposed to do it– you should probably listen to yourself and get it done, whatever it is. Especially if it’s REALLY important to you. It might not be AS important to someone else. This particually applies to things when deadlines are concerned. There’s not a worse feeling than after you bust your ass, and demolish deadlines or some goal, and someone else takes the ball and drops it.

Watched Knight Rider last night. Just because I’m a nerd. My kids loved it, but I think I’m a KNight Rider purist. It was odd them talking about characters that didn’t exist in the original show. Like that woman he had a kid with? She was never in the original series, her character I mean. Weird. Why couldn’t they just stick to the continuity. It really threw it off having Michael Knight show up at the funeral at the end. Hell, they should have just had him as the head of the foundation now. That would have made more sense. Not a real big fan of Val Kilmer’s voice as KITT either. I thought I would be. But maybe it was just in parts it seemed rushed, because I don’t think he had much time to come in and do the voice overs after Will Arnett got canned from the job for being the voice of GMC truck. They should probably just shitcan this show, I don’t think there are any plans for a new series that I’ve seen.

Anywho– gotta go draw comics now. If you’re here reading this, go read HeroByNight.com  

So all I’ve been doing is Hero By Night pretty much since 2006, and I love it. I love playing in the universe we’ve built. I just got done writing some “how it came about” type intros for something else, and it reminded me that Hero By Night was that project in 2003 that was sitting on a back burner until 2006 when I entered it into Comic Challenge and it all took off. And it’s been nice ONLY doing Hero By Night work and not working like a complete madman like I use to on 3 or 4 projects at a time to make ends meet. I count myself very lucky.

But in thinking about the “back burner” ideas, ideas just like HBN that I KNOW are solid and can sell and entertain, it gets me energized to develop other things on the side. Anyone remember Zombieopolis? — that sort of stuff, and I have about seven others sitting on those burners that I know are solid concept.  So anyways– I talk myself out of it all the time. Why kill yourself? Why work harder? And the years go by. What am I actually waiting for? More time? Waiting to be broke? So I might have to start manning up on the side and quietly developing some things, and see where the chips fall. Maybe we can do it independently, maybe we can get represented or optioned— but before worrying about any of that the STORY has to be fun and entertaining and EXIST.

It’s not that I’m LAZY either. Hell, there are days I put 16 hours in here. Days I wake up, grab coffee and work nonstop until night. But I know I can work smarter– I know all of those hours aren’t pencil to paper moments. I do a lot of research for stories, and learning things– and the internet can suck you in with endless information. Then I spend quite a few hours a week thinking about BUSINESS and new marketing and nerdy things– how to use new services and technologies to deliver comics, and how to keep the old comics alive.

So yeah– it might be time to man the efh up here soon. Let the chips fall where they may.

Oh, snap— the Nerdcast guys are calling me at 1pm to do an interview– gotta go run and do some stuff before they call.

Today is shaping up to be a better day than yesterday. Thank goodness.

Called the oil people first thing to complain about the bill, and the lady added up the total wrong on the phone with me too– but I said, no, it should be THIS… so she recalculated and saw we were right and had been charged 20cents extra per gallon– about 40 bucks or so. They apologized and said they are sending us a check. I haven’t had problems with this place before, but this time probably felt dicky because I was having such a bad day. If they have the best price, I’ll use them again I suppose— AND if the check shows up in a couple days.

I’ve gotten a couple emails about the new Hero By Night issue– people are digging it, love the action. Also I got a note from a new fan in Pittsburgh who happened to Stumbleupon our comic and realized it was set in Steel City. His local shop seems to not carry it, or is out of it or he hasnt seen it there, so he’s going to go pimp it for me– I sent him a hardcover and issues 1 and 2 direct. I like hiding little things inside the HBN story for local fans to find. Like the address of the Brick, is actually the comic store he shops at– I don’t think they even know it yet.

I don’t have much else I can think to talk about today– just want to get some work done here now that my fingers are warm!

So yeah– today was one of THOSE days. The universe just wrapped up a big FUCK YOU Valentine from the moment we got up.

- Woke up in bed to my fingers freezing. I thought… is the heat on? No. No it wasn’t. Something was up. I popped open the furnace to see the red service light was on. I had checked the oil levels and thought we had enough… the oil was being delivered today too. Fantastic! This kinda happened last year and it was just a clogged nozzle inside the furnace…. but this time, it was completely kicked off.

- Called service guy who says he wants to hold off coming out until the oil comes. We dont know what time that will be. So I call the oil place and they say between 12-2pm — fine.

- I bust out two electric heaters. One in my office, one in the living room. Kids were mailed off to school, so that was all good and they wouldn’t be cold and complaining.

- My wife heads off to the gym— minutes after she leaves,the school nurse calls to say that boy #2 is vomiting at school. AWESOMENESS!!! So she has to pick him up.

- While I ink with my fingers freezing, I hope and pray that somehow my check made it in the mail toay…. it did not. This bummed me out. Now I had a service guy coming for the furnace, oil delivery coming… mortgage due, other stuff due… and well, we’re pretty broke. I can’t do anything about it now, BUT I quietly affirm to myself that I’m not going to have to get ontop of these things EARLY so I’m not in this situation again. Nobodies fault really, just a bunch of bad timing. My wife is not pleased though, and beginning to stress out, which adds to the mix of frustration I’m having internally.

- So… the furnace repair man gets here about 2pm— still no oil guy though! HOORAY! So he swaps out the filter and nozzle which were clogged to crap. Fine, but it appears our oil measuring thing is off, and we ARE low on oil, not enough to keep the flame steady, so the furnace kicks off. Ok… so the furnace guy says, we can either A. Wait for the oil asshat to get here… or B. Go buy 10 gallons of Kerosene to put in the tanks to help break up any sludge and test where the feed tube level is inside the tanke. I opt for wait for the oil asshats because I don’t have anything to get 10 gallons of kerosene in. WEE!

- The heating guy was cool though, I like their company and their people. They are thorough and we killed some time. He asked about my job and people always seem fantastically impressed with what I do, they want to hear about the story, and ask how I come up with things. It’s just different, so people want to hear how it all works. So it was nice to bullshit with a stranger in the basement, and exchange travel stories and other business things.

- Oil asshat finally decides to show up and put oil in the tank. Bip bam.. done. Gone. Turns out, when we called last week to order, they told us 2.79 a gallon– but they billed us today 2.95, even though the yellow slip said 2.79. Basically it was 40 bucks more than what we expected– and my wife was peeved and bummed out– but the furnace guy said– WHAT???!!! He told me that oil companies like that when they quote you, they have to give you the quote they gave you and no more.  But it’s the end of the business day and the dude is gone with he full check.— my wife calls and the lady says on the phone “No, it’s 2.95 today” — well, the furnace guy says that’s not legal—- so in the morning, first thing, we’re canceling that check number– and I’m having my wife write a check for the 2.79 price. — completely ridiculous.

- My wife then gets a call from the  inlaws–her dad had a spell last night, almost went in anaphylactic shock. — He’s okay which is good news.

- end of the day, the heat is on.. the H is O!!! And the furnace guy said we could send the bill in, which gives me time for my check to show up here. So that’s awesome news.

- This day has sucked. I’m going with my WARM fingers, try to finish inks on a page now. Then I’m going to watch LOST and then end this Valentine’s Day cuddling with my wife, which I secretly look forward to everyday. Just relaxing and watching Ghost Hunters with her eases my mind.

- Tomorrow….. JUGGERNAUT COMETH!

Woke up this morning to a freezing house. Looks like the furnace went out. So I’ll be dealing with this issue all morning until it’s figured out. Probably just a clogged filter or something– looks like the warning light came on and it the auto shutdown kicked in, which is good. Now to call the pros and have them charge me money I technically don’t have at this very moment.  Fantastic!

If it’s Wednesday where you are, then run to a comic shop and pick up issue #2 of Hero By Night! Seriously, we’re really proud of this series. Not to toot my own horn here, I think it’s a TEAM effort. From the witty dialogue of writer James Patrick, to the vibrant colors of Jason Embury…. me? I don’t know what I bring to it, just a lot of monster monkey kicking HBN’s butt all over Steel City, for an all out, truly ALL AGES romp.

You know, creating… and being independent… sometimes it feels like it was before… that the book was in a catalog but not really OUT THERE. We get great reviews, but there’s always this lingering fear that nobody gives a crap. Or nobody I admire will be picking up the book, or stocking it at their stores. So I get tickled when the reviews come in, or I get a google alert with people putting it on their pull list. I just saw Pete from the Pulp Secret show mentioned it among other GREAT books that I just have never been listed with before. It’s humbling. I mean, it’s Pete from Pulp Secret! I love Pulp Secret! Now if they’d only mention HBN on the show!

Through the power of google I find a dude on the DC comics message board saying he’s buying it “x2″ and yes, that means 2 copies! THANK YOU!

And it’s a blast having everyone over at HeroByNight.com reading along. Being in webcomics for so long, I almost feel like anyone who mentions our title, is a FRIEND. Does that seem weird?

I’d say I was nervous this time… but I know this is just one knockout of a fun issue. And it never gets old having my kids read them first to see the expressions on their face. Something truly magical there… just like I couldn’t wait to read the next issue when I was kid, now I can’t wait until the next issue comes out so I can show my kids.

My oldest son said he had a friend at school who really wanted the new issues, but I guess didn’t have money. He has my son read his copy to him on the bus. I slapped two copies in a backboard, signed em and told my son to give him a copy– he hasn’t seen the new series yet. Anyways… that makes me feel good. I really hope this book makes other people feel good… ages 8 to 80.

We have a lot of snow outside. Kids had no school today.

Work is going slow today– but I’m at least happy with the work coming out of my fingers today. I’m excited that I’ve rediscovered Stumbleupon.com, it’s a great little tool for well, stumbling on stuff in different categories, giving thumbs up to stuff you find that you like, etc. I use the firefox toolbar to make it easier….

A bonus about Stumbleupon, and one that I’ve heard works GREAT for other webcomics, and checking some of the PW stats of some other popular webcomics I see that it’s so, but basically Stumbleupon will send NEW traffic to your site. And there are neat stumble exchanges online too. The more your site is stumbled, the more it’s randomly shown in categories that people are browsing, if that makes sense. I noticed an almost immediate boost in referrers, but then about 40 minutes in, it disappeared as a referrer from my tracker– making me believe Drunk Duck is somehow blocking it— but I’m not sure.

Igotta say, I think Drunk Duck should have this installed as a tool for other webcomics. But individual webcomics can add the codes on their own. If you happen to have Stumbleupon, go give a thumbs up to our site. I made a little Stumble button there that you can use each day too for a new stumble. This will really help bring in some new readers— the stats proved it today, as we were suddently 50/50 new and returning visitors. That’s pretty awesome!

Woo– another election day. I’m hoping Obama sweeps. National polls now show Obama in front of Clinton for the first time. Maybe the people are buying a clue that he’s the only one that’s going to beat the republicans this go around.

I won’t be blogging as much– going to focus on work, and try to focus on the positive here.

Skipped the gym today– kids had a COLD delay, it was like 20 below with windchill. This threw off my schedule a bit, but I think I’m going to begin my early riser routine again.

I’m annoyed by Marvel’s digital comics subscription. I finally was bored and decided to jump on and read some Ultimate Spiderman to check out what Bendis has been up to, or actually, I was digging the news that Bagley was going to be drawing that weekly series and wanted to check out some of his old art— well I get in, and Im reading a couple issues of a Kingpin storyline that was pretty cool actually– then it jumps from like #79, to issue #86. They skip the whole storyarc– obviously they want you to maybe go out an buy a trade? But it’s dumb. I’m not doing that. I paid for the subscription for my kids, and for me to go in and now and then read something else to see what other people are up to…

So yeah, if you’re going to charge for a service putting out serial stories and back issues– please put them all up. It’s totally turned me off now. My kids will still use it, but as a reader who paid for this service– it wasnt “sign up for a dick tease!”– it was worth it because I thought myself or my kids could read a story online. And now it’s all clusterfucked around– as if you’re digging around in a back issue box that’s missing that ONE issue that finishes the arc. That is so fucking dumb and a bad use of this service.

Well, Fool me once! Someone at Marvel could use a slapping.

People ask me what KTOF means, I put it in my comics a lot for band t-shirts, etc. Well it means KING TESTICLES and the ORACLES OF FEAR!

It was my old friend’s band. He’s not in this world anymore, but I always reckon that he went off to the mystical unknown, the other side, the great beyond… and I know he’s simply OWNING it. He had this thing about squids and tentacles, and elvis… so if I had to draw or write him into a comic as a character he’d be some omnipotent being from another dimension, battling the forces of FEAR in all of existence.  Under his Elvis cape, he’d have tentacles out his back, tentacles which could enter multiple dimensions at will to do his bidding.