D.J. Coffman - Sequential Artist, Thinker

I just got done drawing an old man kicking some ass, I’m feeling awesome. Time for a blog break.

So you know, I haven’t been reading other comics in a long time, like mainstream comics. I want to be careful not to criticize too heavily on things, because i know my artwork isn’t perfect and surely our book isn’t THE BEST, but still–I thought I’d check out some of the big buzz books i see that are selling out or whatnot and I gotta say, I was less than impressed.

Maybe it’s a matter of having so much fun doing my own stuff and keeping the FUN and action and a lot of little fun plots in my work, then opening something that’s  too dark or serious.

All-Star Batman and Robin - Jim Lee and his colorist are GENIUSES, but Frank Miller’s writing??? I was a bit surprised that the stories kinda of sucked. I’m disappointed actually… surely I thought this would HAVE to rock. Instead, it left me scratching my head and feeling like ol’ Frank wanted that exact reaction from me. It’s sad that I don’t feel right handing that book to my kids…. not that I’m an uppity parent or anything.

All-Star Superman– I just can’t get into the art… it’s boring. I mean, it’s all realistic and stylized, but it’s took “talky” and decompressed for my own liking I guess.

Secret Invasion #1 — Hey, I’m a big Bendis fan from WAY back… like his Caliber days. But since his move to Marvel sort of coincided with the time that I stopped buying comics regularly, I’ve rarely picked up issues– I’ve checked out some Ultimate Spider-Man’s, and even tried getting my kids on that for a while– (those were the books they thought were boring and that made me sad and got me thinking…) — I picked up the Secret Invasion because I did hear about the clever marketing where they’ve been putting clues out for a long time in the line of comics– but i gotta say I just can’t get into it. The art I think is what is killing it for me– Bendis of course has a knack for crafty dialogue and back and forths and intricate subplots– but something about the art was bugging me. The closeups on the eyes, it looks like Tony Stark is using Maybeline eyelash pens or something.

I know comics these days aren’t directly aimed at kids… I’m not a dummy. And I’m not saying these comics suck either— But there’s got to be a way to bridge the gap of comics readers of all ages– without being TOO kid friendly and without being too adult. I know we do it with Hero By Night, but part of me wishes more people did it too.

I don’t even like to talk about the weird epiphanies I get, but this was another example of me sitting back thinking— geez, i can do this better. It seems impossible to even think it, but suddenly your rational mind is saying… I could write Batman better than Frank Miller.  Well, the 2008 Frank Miller at least! —

Those epiphanies scare me. I don’t know why. I don’t even know if “scare” is the word…  they almost make me feel like i have some sort of responsibility now that I feel this as a fact. Impending responsibility I guess can sometimes be a scary thing.

I could see myself being an EIC guiding a company’s stories and direction a bit. Some people know how to build barns, I know COOL stories when I see one.

In contrast to those things– and something that’s WAY adult— one of the most awesome comics out there is Walking Dead, which contradicts everything I just said. But the storytelling is amazing, and it makes you DAMN!!!! a lot. I mean, you almost expect it with each turn of the page that some main character is just going to suddenly be dead. BLAM!– See, that’s how a ZOMBIE comic should be… it is the master of the genre.

Back to drawing an old guy kicking ass.

Family: This past week has been a rough one with the death of my wife’s grandmother. My wife has been, understandably, a wreck at times–  She’s doing better now as we get back in the swing of day to day life here. It was nice to have her cousins in, whom we thought were 10 hours away, but found out were actually only six hours away, so we may be planning a road trip to North Carolina this summer. Many stories were exchanged of the level of douchebaggery that goes on in these death situations, or back when they were putting her grandparents in the assisted living home and the family was selling everything off to raise money— I won’t get into that, but it sure seems to me, that when all was said and done her grandparents had about half a million to retire on… but it’s all gone in only a matter of a few years– we wonder that certain things don’t add up, and in fact, I had heard there have been several trips to Las Vegas by the folks who became the legal decision makers… but I don’t want to make accusations… it’s just a curious fact. I have faith that if anything seedy was going on, EVER, that Karma works all that out. — I think I am preconditioned to only lean on what I see as the good in people, and not the little devils inside us all.

Work: Back at it hardcore today. I have a lot I wish to get done.  Scanning, lettering, penciling and some other stuff as well. I only have 2 weeks until I spend a few days at New York Comicon, so I want to get ahead. Busy April! — So, our special issue 4 that’s only 99 cents and available for preorder now– after that I’ve asked that our cover price on issue 5 be taken back down to 2.99 instead of 3.99 that we launched with. Our current head of publishing at Platinum, Sean O’Reilly, believes that the increase in cover price never really made a matter, and mostly that could be true, but I disagree after seeing our preorder numbers for the past 3 issues. They’ve been about half of what our miniseries numbers were, and I’ve seen mention of the 3.99 cover price on some blogs where people enjoyed our book, but were on the fence on ordering it because of the cover price. I know stores don’t mind, and some retailers will tell you that customers will spend the money regardless if they are going to buy your book, they’ll buy your book. but therein lies the problems here… we’re not Spider-Man or Superman or something people “know of” really. Blame that on a lot of things, but it boils down to pretty much little to no advertising in the comic industry about our book, outside the full page ad inside the Previews magazine… I know many retailers who simply won’t order new indy titles unless they are by a proven company or “name” in comic or a customer actually goes in and asks them to preorder. The way the market is for MOST shops, they simply don’t have the budget to take on new titles– This is why we push preordering so much to our online readers.— But again, that’s a very backward situation, I know. The direct market distribution system needs some sort of overhaul. I’m not the person to tackle that issue, but enough people agree, that’s for sure.

I’m very confident that when a shop DOES regularly pick up our book, they order again, but that might only be 500-600 shops out there doing that right now. We’re, on purpose, making a book that’s fun for people who love comics, and new people. It’s getting that message out that’s a bit hard. It’s mostly just word of mouth ad a previews listing— I’m meditating on how I can fix that from here without causing any waves or without putting too much of an extra workload on top of my work load.

I may do direct preorders from me. This would mean you’d be able to preorder anything we’d sell direct from me, and I’d tabulate the orders, go to MY local shop (Joy’s Japanimation)– put in a big order, that I would then wait for, and then pick up, and then ship out signed to every “direct reader”– This is my LAST choice, because it’s a lot of tedious work, but it can be done. It might have to be done.

The greatest thing we have going for us right now is the remarkable fact that we have more “readers” each day than Batman, Superman, Spider-Man. Those big companies haven’t put up “webcomics” the way webcomics really work and the way we’ve been doing it. That’s a big opportunity there on all sides of that equation, I think. Through the webcomic we’re reaching new people each day with a chance that we’ll hook a fan for life. That doesn’t really happen on comic book store shelves where things like “market saturation” come into play. Where one shop only has so many customers with so many dollars to spend…. there is no market saturation in webcomics. There could be someone coming across this little blog for the very first time and see a link to Hero By Night and curiosity has just given us a new reader for life.

Off to get coffee… then work.

So I will be at the New York Comicon at the Platinum Studios table there. Most likely drawing stuff and or pimping Hero By Night and Comic Book Challenge III. - That’s April 18-20 at the Jacob Javitz Center in New York City.

The following weekend I’ll have a Hero by Night table at Pittsburgh Comicon. Lots to pimp, including our 99cent issue in Previews NOW (order it!) along with the power ring– and not to mention our Free Comic Book Day issue coming up, which is a nice little ditty between issues 3 and 4…

That’s about it on the homefront—  doing some family stuff today most of the day, then nose back down to work.

You ever have a morning though where you felt like virtually punching someone in the face on the internet? Yeah, I have those.

I’m trucking along with new art at the desk, and I’ve been sort of in a “zone” I guess. — Have to attend a funeral later this evening, and a burial tomorrow. Never fun, but I have a strange new perspective about death that has built over the years– I won’t get into that right now, or it would turn into blabbering tome that runs on for screens and screens.

I see “journalist” Dirk Deppey on his journalista, is taking jabs at my publisher again, upon the news of them releasing the financial statements for last year. You see, those guys over at the Fantagraphics have a huge running grudge against my big boss, Scott Rosenberg– If you’ve ever met him or actually done business with him, you know he’s the nicest guy in the world and not how three people paint him online. But yeah, there’s a grudge there, and it clouds their judgement on reporting anything he has to do with– Dirk says:

[Publishing] Platinum Studios has just released its 2007 financial results, and the Potemkin Village is still looking fairly unpopulated. Not surprisingly, they’re putting their best spin on things:

For the year ended December 31, 2007, Platinum reported net revenues of $1.96 million compared to net revenues of $0.18 million for fiscal year 2006, representing a year-over-year increase of more than 1000%.

1000%! Woo woo! There’s certainly nothing wrong with $2 million in yearly profits, to be sure, but it doesn’t exactly sound like they’ve hit the big Hollywood pipeline just yet, does it? Hell, I bet if you were to consolidate Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly into a single company, the results would probably be earning somewhere around that much as well, and it’s not like either company is exactly a massive industry titan either. Of course, Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly do at least sell comic books…

Honestly, I like to read Journalista when I remember to, I like the mix of comic news from across the spectrum, and Dirk does a good job of putting it together– but he’s incapable of stating anything positive or TRUE about Platinum Studios. He asserts that Platinum is a “Potemkin Village”, which means it’s just a hollow town set up to trick your enemies– an he asserts that Platinum doesn’t SELL comic books— both are completely false. If he had read the entire thing, he’d of seen that Platinum has published over 43 books this year, a year when they were NOT public, mind you– and they earned their profits as an independent firm. Plus, I personally know all the people who work so hard behind the scenes and I’m insulted at the notion that they still try to paint that nothing is going on and it’s all a Rosenbergian trick of some sort…. on the contrary, MUCH is going on… BIG things, in my opinion, but that’s all I’ll say.

The old, uhm, ME, would have called names to vent my disappointments with such articles or journalists– but I know it’s better to just point out the facts. I can’t think of many other independent comic companies last year who has 1000% increase in revenues, and then went public. The people who would criticize those numbers are the same people in 2006 who said Platinum would NEVER print an actual comic book. Then when Platinum started to print books, those same people said they wouldn’t exist in a year…. but here they are. I had certain snarky people tell me directly, that after my 4 issues of the original Hero By Night book, Platinum would be done with me and HBN— but here we are making a go of an ongoing series! As I speak, I’m into my 8th issue on the series, not to mention the countless other webcomics I’ve done for it… and it’s all because the real people at Platinum, within their walls, people that actually DO exist, believe in me and my vision. — And not just Hero By Night, I’d like to think, and have been told that I’ve helped them rethink a few things inside over the 2007 year. –

Platinum is doing something unique right now, marching to their own drumbeat with a very smart gameplan. Sometimes that can seem frustrating to me as a person who still has that mindset of the guy who would hand staple and distribute his own comics…. but when I start thinking BIGGER, and start thinking 10, 20 years down the line, that’s when I see the real opportunities and uniqueness. And one things for sure… Scott Mitchell Rosenberg is a very patient man. He knows that something (an IP) that’s not quite catching on now, can hit big in another time– and now with Platinum, they have a shelf full of em… 5600 now?!

ANYWAYS– my job isn’t to worry or get upset about any of that. What use to be “anger”, is now a strange disappointment I feel, that none of that is helping comics in anyway. Plus it doesn’t matter what one random douche thinks on the internet. If opinions were formed by that, we’d all be in serious trouble. My job is to go write and draw comics you will remember forever.  That’s my job for now.

Change comes from the bottom up.

Oh, and…. GOBAMA! — “SHock poll”shows Obama in the lead of Clinton in Pennsylvania. – I hope our state helps decide this one once and for all.

The big bad news is, my wife’s grandmother passed away last night. This is my wife’s favorite person on the planet, no doubt. And I’m glad this lady lived here, because she embedded something in my wife that I love dearly– some sort of true old fashioned family values. My wife’s other grandfather on the other side of the family only passed away one month and 10 days ago, so she’s just emotionally drained right now— the only comforting thought is her grandma is now with her grandfather who passed away two years ago– he was a good man, a carpenter who built their own house and they were very proud of it. In their elder years here, everything they built was stript or sold away as they were put into nursing homes and shuffled around. A very sad story, and all too common.

I just wanted to look my wife in the eye, and I couldn’t do it, but I wanted to look my wife in the eye and let her know that her grandfather has been building a much bigger house for the past two years for his wife to come and live in, and now they’re happy together. That thought makes ME happy, but it also makes me cry like a sissy.

Here is the comic I drew for my wife when her grandfather passed away 2 years ago.