D.J. Coffman - Sequential Artist, Thinker

“DJ, you’re not a YES man. Lots of people I deal with in Hollywood are surrounded by YES men (or dude’s just milking the cow and nodding their heads), and what they need to do is be surrounded by more guys like you”

Fed Ex showed up with a check from Platinum paying me up to date anything that was owed to me, so that whole issue is over with. I’m glad they paid me, and honestly none of this would have blown up for me if I hadn’t nearly lost my house and life banking on or trusting that money would show up on time. It is what it is though, and I learned a valuable lesson that there is no job security anywhere, no matter what a piece of paper says.  The envelope included a letter saying my “consultant” agreement with them was terminated as of today, which is fine with me, because in my mind it was terminated when checks never really showed up on time in the terms of that agreement.

People are still yammering on about rights issues, and giving me advice to call lawyers, or I’ve had MULTIPLE lawyers call or email me about “putting the screws to Platinum” and getting my rights back to Hero By Night, and I want to put the fucking brakes on all of those thoughts or discussions. While I do appreciate people caring about my best interests (although some are totally out for their own benefits, i mean, you know you hear those jokes about lawyers showing up at car accidents? Well believe me they show up when they hear the words DREAMWORKS and Movie deals and stuff too, and I don’t have time for that shitty nonsense) — So listen, #1, my original contract is still intact with them, and I’ve never once ever disputed the fact that Platinum owns Hero By Night, I gladly and willingly SOLD IT TO THEM, straight up. Trust me, there are no loopholes or weaselly ways out or about it, they own it, it’s fine, and I’m still connected and I’ll still make money with anything they ever do with it, and that’s what I originally signed on for with Comic Book Challenge.

The only reason rights came up at all, was because not in lieu of any money owed to me, they offered that shot at me taking over the print/webcomics thing on my own to keep it going, because like I honestly said, it’s no surprise that they were losing money putting out the books, it would have been a no-brainer to not take the loss, but continue to generate stories and content they could represent to their part of the entertainment world. I was still, even when staring at some SERIOUSLY BAD things in my own personal finances, looking out for the best interest of Platinum and the future of Hero By Night with my original statement on why books that were solicited weren’t going to be coming out, because fans, retailers, etc deserved to know. People that know the ground level of the comic industry know this, it can’t be pushed under a rug and you decide not to care what only 1000 people think. You gotta approach it with caring what 10 or 100 people might think, and address it honestly and as openly as possible.

I guess I have no more beef left with them, but I’m still a little disheveled on the way I was communicated with, or not communicated with. They know why I got my pants in a bunch. And I don’t think anyone could know the exact pressures or time frames I was under, even though I did communicate those pretty transparently. My only hope now is that they learned a big lesson from my critiques both internally and externally in going forward and dealing with other creators and inside this small little comic book industry. You can’t just focus on the “BIG” things in Hollywood. Especially if the “fuel” in “Comics Fueling Media Everywhere” is “comics.” Communication, good or bad, has to be consistant and often, not in sporadic problem errors or waiting for a fire to break out to douse water on it.

Best of luck to them going forward, and I sincerly hope hard lessons were learned on all sides.

I learned mine.

Please forgive me if I can’t get back to all of your emails right now, or post as much as I’d like to. I’m actually pretty busy here, and busy is good because it keeps my mind off of negative things or drama that seems to make time go by too fast. Until I get back to blogging here here’s a list of ways you can keep tabs on my work and what I’m doing:

All things Flobots: You can find the comic at Flobots.net , the passion at Flobots.org, and my new favorite social media site, FightWithTools.org , where I will be busy fighting with my tools.

WillDrawAnything.com: The “Will Draw Anythings” have stacked up, and I have about 30 or so in the queue. I’m tempted to just launch them on their own url there. For better or worse, you can see all the published ones so far over here in the “satisfied customers gallery” - Watch it as it will gradually spiral out of control and into deviant sectors. But it’ll be fun!

And of course, you will find Yirmumah where you left her, at Yirmumah.com

Thank you, and good night. (Or good morning?)

37. When your dreams become reality, they are no longer your dreams.

If you are successful, it’ll never come from the direction you predicted. Same is true if you fail.

Is it the 25th? I’m losing track of my days here. June is flying by….

Update from me workwise…

Flobots comic is still in it’s “beta launch” as I slowly put that out a tier a day for the first story. Jason Embury had toleave coloring duties because of his limited time, which is understandable. So I’m switching into “one man army” mode again on my approach for drawing pages and stories. I might decide to actually do MORE now and keep the webcomic a standard full page every M-W-F - We’ll see. I have to test my speed and patience today, after coffee. These are reasons I launched this as “beta” to see what shakes down, because I’ve had the experience in knowing anything can happen. Wow, we are getting some AMAZING stories coming in though, some heartfelt and very passionate. I can’t wait to crack into the more sci-fi aspect of the whole thing as well.

SketchCards: I have some submissions in for official sketchcard work for a few big companies and titles, waiting to hear back hopefully this week. I could use the money, and frankly it’s pretty fun to mess around with. Can’t wait to show off the sample ones I did, but it’ll have to wait until after I hear what’s what.

WillDrawAnything: Yesterday was a lot of fun. I have a ton of requests stacked up now though, not sure if I’ll be able to get to them all today, so I might have to ammend the 24 hour thing, but it’s an awesome addition of content, hell I’m thinking it could even be it’s own darn comic on the side, we’ll see. There’s definitly more than enough content adding up, and it’s all beautifully random!

Speaking of that…. Read more

Been working all day. Skipped blogging in the morning. An update on various things

The “Will Draw Anything for $2″ feature has been great so far. Lots of funny requests coming in, some that are a bit naughty I guess, but “anything” means anything at this point. Check the link to find the ones I’ve done so far or request your own. Read more

A friend of mine did something similar years ago and I always wanted to try it as an alternative means to “donation” incentives for a webcomic like Yirmumah.

How it works is this– you paypal 2 bucks along with a description of what you want. “Bear beating up a rabbit and cooking it” — “George Bush On Fire” — I then spend about 5 minutes per drawing, and then email you the jpg within 24 hours. I will also post these in the blog over at Yirmumah.com as almost what could end up being a fun secondary feature to come back and look at every day as they progress.

Anyone interested in getting in on the first “sample” gallery, paypal me your 2 bucks, use the paypal cart below. This might be fun.

What would you like me to draw?

I saw the news come across the wire last night around 1am about George Carlin and was bummed. I guess when you take into effect that he was 71 and his prior health issues and problems with addiction, he’s lucky to have made it that far. That’s a really good run! I loved Carlin– I remember first experiencing his comedy and it let me know it was okay to laugh out loud over those darker things you hide in your mind and think about. There were times I’d tell myself that some dark humor I had just written was TOO FAR, and then I’d think about the comedians out there who make me laugh so hard you cry or pee or cringe, and George Carlin was always at the top of that list. What would George Carlin do? Would he censor himself? This guy spilt the truth like none other.

A friend over on our forum mentioned how his death was just in time for the 4th of July:

“When I die, I don’t want to be buried, but I don’t want to be cremated either. I want to be blown up. Put me on a pile of explosives and blow me up. Or throw my body from a helicopter. That would be fun. One stipulation: wherever I land, you have to leave me there. Even if it’s on the mayor’s lawn. Just let me lie there. But keep the dogs away.”

I find myself in a pretty ackward situation here. But I want to be transparent with the fans of Hero By Night, who are the people who originally voted for it to win the first Comic Book Challenge and who made us the #1 Super Hero Webcomic online, with more regular returning readers than many mainstream titles by the big two.

A couple weeks ago I had reported here on my blog, that Platinum Studios had brought up to me the idea of getting me the print and web rights to Hero By Night back to allow me to continue Hero By Night on my own. This would not be in lieu of any money they owed me, but just something that could possibly keep HBN alive in some form on my own. Not full rights, Platinum would of course still handle all the tv and film and general “hollywood” stuff that’s their bread and butter. Well, that post ended up igniting some controversy and drama around the comic news sites. Not long after that, I did get a check in the mail for some of what I’m owed in back pay, which was pretty helpful for me to payoff some bills that had gotten backed up here. There were a lot of people who wanted to change the whole news into some creator rights fiasco or a “D.J. Coffman was screwed”  story or headline, of to which I actually went out and defended that this wasn’t the case, it was just a case of really bad timing, and late pay. Nobody was refusing to NOT pay anyone, there was just no real clear communication on when past due pays would be showing up, and it was growing increasingly frustrating as time dragged on and I heard disturbing rumors crop up from other creators.

A long story short, I had emailed the folks at Platinum to inquire if there had been any movement about the rights issue so that I could possibly get moving and publishing at least the webcomic on my own before the audience that we built for 2 years completely dropped off. I pretty much got this form letter sounding reply that included this statement:

…Please be advised that due to the controversy stirred up as a result of your recent blogging and interviews, all discussions between us regarding any potential licensing back to you of limited rights to Hero By Night are on hold.  At this time, we cannot say when those discussions might be resurrected. - Brian Altounian

To summarize, “we were gonna, but you talked, and now we’ve changed our minds.” Fantastic!

Wow. This immediately had struck me as a “You’ve been a bad boy, DJ” type statement, and they had gone back on what they had agreed to. I was pissed the moment I read it, but honestly, it’s within their right to completely change their mind or go back on their word. They don’t HAVE to give me back anything. And, obviously, inside the company they were obviously pretty pissed about me saying anything about pay not coming on time. That lead to Rich Johnston reporting on it at Comic Book Resources, and other creators who are not happy coming forward to thim — I’m not sure if by sending me that statement they thought it would make me be quiet now as a “Well, don’t say anything more and MAYBE we’ll “resurrect” talks with you, but that’s how I read it. I received no follow up emails or communications to my reply to them.

Like I said, they have every right to not deal with me now. But I question if that is the right thing for them to do, ethically at this point? If ethics are out the window in this conversation, then fine, so be it. I think the win-win would have been for them to allow me to continue producing it on my own, toss me that bone. The company wouldn’t be taking a loss on it anymore and content that they still could have represented would have been being made with no new costs coming out of research and development. Even if you were completely pissed off at me and hated my guts for telling the truth, this would have been the smart business decision. I know they have similar deals with other creators (Rob Liefeld, I think) , so this clearly feels to me, in my own opinion as just a slap on the wrist to keep me quiet. Wow, that worked out swimmingly, didn’t it.

And YES. I realize I might be an idiot for even opening my mouth and jeopardizing those talks. If they want to take this other path, I’m not going to be heartbroken about. I’m a smart person and I knew that was a possibility, But like i said before, the readers are very important to me, I had to let them know why issues they were buying, even in the TOP SELLING titles at sites like HeavyInk.com on preorder for weeks, wouldn’t be coming out afterall. And it wasn’t because I didn’t live up to my deadlines or anything in my own contract. I’ve been told by some people that I was actually TOO NICE in my original statement, but I didn’t hold any malicious intent or ill will for Platinum, I wanted to see the company do what was best in this situation where everyone was being told to hold on, and that they understood I needed to do what I needed to do. The plain truth is, I asked several times to several different people there, what should I say? What should I do? How long should I wait? What should I tell the fans? — and I got no clear answers from anyone, and I was left with the tough choice I had to make. It would have come out either way I suppose, but I didn’t feel right with having our readers or sites like HeavyInk preordering our issue 5s that wouldn’t be coming out.– I guess I could have said NOTHING and just went radio silent. Let fans wonder where their books are, or assume it was the reasons that are usually why books are late. But Jason Embury and myself always took great pride in being on time and delivering vibrant, quality and entertaining books.

I guess to the people at Platinum Studios, I’d say it’s not too late to do the right thing here. I know they won’t be happy about me writing this, and probably leaves an unpleasant taste in their mouth, but to them, I say, for all the times you praised me or my work ethic, and told me that you wished all creators worked like me, for all the times I went to bat for the company or people there, for all the times you needed something tomorrow and we had it to you today– make this situation right somehow. Because, at least to me, it feels pretty wrong right now.

I’m the same straight shooter that they hired in 2006, and praised for it. I’m afraid they can’t have it both ways.

I’ve had a lot of private conversations with other creators who have approached me, none of which I’d like to get into in detail yet unless those people want to pipe up themselves. But I can say this… these creators are pretty puzzled that they haven’t been paid, some pretty past due and in worse situations than I am, but then they see all the great press releases about Platinum upcoming movie deals, and the real kicker was hearing that Platinum was firing up a whole new line of comic publishing with Vanguard Animation. Some of these creators have told me privately, they are afraid to speak up, thinking they won’t ever be paid, but I’m not afraid to let both Platinum Studios and the world know that at least 7 of these people think that news about a new comic publishing line was ridicously unethical when you owe a bunch of current creators money. I had no idea the situation had gotten that bad behind the scenes with other creators or a breakdown in clear communication, but it’s really sad.

I always said from the get-go this wasn’t a creator rights issue, but now with talking to other creators, I think it’s sort of become one as I hear the other stories. I kinda feel like I’m not only speaking up for myself, but a lot of those creators who are currently pretty frustrated and pissed off, and possibly future creators out there, to maybe not go blabbing and being as transparent as D.J. Coffman. Or, maybe as others have suggested, this is how things get accomplished, and things change for the better. For creators AND publishers.

Did you ever have one of those waking thoughts that seemed brilliant and you figured out the entire universe or some missing piece of something, and then in a fleeting moment, it’s gone. POOF! Or you think later on, what a ridiculous idea you had that your sleepy brain was telling you was going to change the world.

This happened to me this morning around 5:30am as I got up to take a piss. I knew the alarm was going to go off at 6am, and thought, well, I can at least lay down for 30 minutes and TRY to get some sleep. I went out like a light, FAST… but in that half hour time, I dreamed an entire day’s events. I mean, scenes playing out in my head that if I told you about, it would play out like a movie you were watching that was much clearly longer than a half hour time, but somehow they were playing out in my brain at some super fast speed.  The alarm indeed wakes me from the dream and for some reason, my brain immediately realized what had just happened, and for some crazy reason, my sleep brain told me, THIS was the secret to all of time/space, or even time travel somehow. I laid there trying to figure out how that had anything to do with anything regarding time travel, and settled on the thought that I’m not that brilliant, but had Einstein had this same moment, he would have been surfing time somehow.

The weird thought is… this time is passing right now, a new day, that is clearly REAL, playing out in actual seconds that are the same length of seconds that anyone on this planet can count out…. but is our brain capable of compressing time and literally playing out in scenes in our mind, full days, possibly years in the blink of an eye, the count of second? A virtual reality you could slip into somehow?

Or what if these long moments that are passing, aren’t really passing at all, maybe we’re all in some long dream that’s only taking an actual half hour nap, but we’re dreaming through our entire life time. Pretty deep, but when mixed with thoughts about “people’s lives flash before their eyes.” — it felt like something.

Probably nothing though. Back to counting…. tick, tick, tick…

Been thinking long and hard about a few things, mostly what to say and how to say it. There are a few things I’m extremely happy about, and a couple that I am extremely not happy about. I don’t think there’s a way I can phrase things at this time that won’t piss someone, somewhere off or start some sort of shitstorm, so I’m going to take another day of contemplation while I work. Part of me thinks maybe a shitstorm is what the world needs right now, that and a big yummy dose of the truth.

Here’s something funny. I saw an interesting piece on BoingBoing this morning about GM looking to be innovative and one of their ideas is to have a fuel cell car where the entire chassis or bottom is the fuel cell itself that could be easily swapped out or charged, almost like, imagine a skateboard deck system underneath. It was interesting and thought provoking, but when I went to check out the video, the site was broken in Firefox and the videos wouldn’t load or certain links wouldn’t even click. I’m not sure if I have much faith in GM to change the world yet with vehicles when they can’t even build a website that works on the world’s most popular internet browser.

I have a buddy who does sketchcards for Topps and Upperdeck– they do all the Lucasfilm cards and Marvel Masterpiece cards. He suggested i give a stab at that, and it seems appealing to me and something I wanted to take a stab at for awhile, so yesterday I spent some time working up 9 different samples, and I think they turned out pretty groovy. So groovy in fact, people who have seen them already want them. So, I’m crossing my fingers on that. It was fun, and kinda refreshing to do a mix of different characters. Using the prismacolors is like riding a bike, and it was fun to mess around with those again…

speaking of riding bikes…. Flobots Comic!

I haven’t been pushing it much with a heavy promotion yet, because I’d like for the first story to be done before sending mass amounts of people there, I know it’s a slow update formula based on my schedule right now, but I might be looking to remedy that pretty soon. And to speak of bad luck, Jason shot himself in the finger with a nail gun, the poor guy, so looks like I’m coloring tomorrows update which is what i should be doing now instead of typing! That is why I never use nail guns or avoid manual labor with my right hand as much as possible. I can’t even imagine Jason’s workload right now and doing it with a bum finger, even an ingrown fingernail or hangnail would really suck. That use to suck when I was working on the old newspaper strip and HAD to keep a buffer no matter what. Luckily, this is pretty laid back for now and free flowing.

Oh, and Yirmumah news briefly. It’s good to have that back, and I realized in a fog the other day, that we were originally signed up with Keenspot right before Hero By Night came along, and pretty much from the keenspot launch Yirmumah was running on fumes. But now, Keenspot is all working different and all, and they’ve welcomed Yirm back in the fold with open arms, and I appreciate the boost. It’s safe to say I was missing it for awhile, but just lacked the time. It’s been really fun to laugh and think about fun things that I can do on my own without approval of any kind.  I guess that’s how I do everything anyway if you really think about it. I’ll do what I want, and the world will bend to my will! Hah!

All of the Hero By Night ring orders are shipped out and on their way. Thanks again to everyone that ordered, and big thanks to Studio Bergstrom for making some kickass merch. Maybe we’ll do some LLAMA pins in the not so distant future…