D.J. Coffman - Sequential Artist, Thinker

Ok, it’s not often I geek out or brag about something I did that appeared somewhere, but this is friggin Conan O’Brien and the Flobots here! Last night my boys and girl appeared on the show, and Andy rocked out a custom CONAN shirt I made for him at the last minute. The idea, of course, was to satirize (in a good way) the whole Shephard Fairey Obama HOPE image we’re all pretty familiar with. Anywho, I’m really proud of my friends, and it’s so surreal to see something I drew on Late Night… Here are some pics

Woke up this morning with these behind the scenes pics from Andy…

Conan loved the shirt and wanted it, so Andy gave Conan the shirt right off his back. Because that’s how AndyRok rolls.

I woke up this morning to a bunch of emails and myspace postings asking me how to get the CONAN HOPE shirt because it was seen on the show. You can snag one here for a very limited time.

Catch the Flobots on tour in a city near you beginning again this week as they kick off their fall tour. Here are the October dates, along with my October tour poster!

Longtime friends of mine might also chuckle at the fact that this design appeared on October 13th.

A new week begins! Huzzah. Starting the week off right, look for Conan shirt I drew for the Flobots to possibly (99.9% chance) appear on the Conan O’Brien show tonight as the Flobots rock the joint out. So strange, this will be the second time this year that one of my t-shirt designs will be on a Late Night NBC show. (last time was Leno) - Such things do not bring me fame or fortune, but smiles and laughs to our faces and high fives from my wife. Anyways, I love Conan, and it’s awesome to see two things you love come together, and to even be the slightest little bit a part of it.

Workload…

Still working on some things for the Flobots behind the scenes. I also secured a colorist for the upcoming “sci-fi” chapter that I will probably begin drawing this week after I wrap up the CHapter two over at http://flobots.net - I have about…80 pages or so to go with this planned story, and I promise it will all tie together and make sense with the slice of life type stories. There are a lot of plans I’ve had behind the scenes and stuff I’ve been waiting to show for when the sci-fi story begins, because that’s the REAL meat of the original story idea I had. It’s high on my agenda this week.

I finally got through the mega order day for the Will Draw Anythings. I’ll have a run now of 10-15 order days that I should be able to catch up on alot faster. But it will take some work. The great thing is, most people forgot all about their 2 dollar order and they get surprised and it makes their day. I thank everyone for their patience and suppor there. Almost to 500! Crazy. It’s just been a crazy, unexpected experiment. I’ve had people pay 20 bucks for one little drawing, I’ve had a guy pay 200! And I’ve had TONS of strange job offers and commission requests on the side. I’m thinking a book of the first 500 may be in order, but I’ll have to find the time to put that together, and right now my priority is actual drawing of said orders that still have 500 to go in the waiting line. Crazy…. crazy, crazy, crazy.

Life- My wife is finally back to work. I know she’s not happy about it, and neither am I. It was nice being the sole breadwinner for awhile, but I’m just not pulling in as much as I was before. My goal before use to be just to make enough money so my wife wouldn’t have to work, and I accomplished that goal for a long time, but now I’m shifting my goal to making enough money so she’ll never have to work EVER again. I don’t know how I’ll do it, or where it will come from, but i know that it will happen– wish me luck!

Well, back to the drawing board for me! More tomorrow…

via Boing Boing, http://www.boingboing.net/2008/09/25/smile-stickers.html

That is just too awesome.

Just watching MSNBC and they’re breaking down why it’s so close in Pennyslvania for Obama because there are many “undecided voters” in Southwestern Pennsylvania. These same undecided voters are very upset with the BUSH adminsistration, which makes the reporters say aloud, if the reason they are undecided is because of race, and they don’t want to say for sure…. but I live here. I can say FOR SURE that’s what it is. This past spring I wrote about family members coming into my house and saying they’d never vote for black guy (although they dropped the N-bomb)- I was pretty furious.

There’s also been this weird uptick in REBEL FLAG sightings on trucks and cars, and even on one guy’s fence that I noticed. Yeah, yeah, I know the people who pop these flags up say it has nothing to do with racism, but let’s cut the friggin crap! You are in PENNSYLVANIA, not the deep south. Just because we’re south of Pittsburgh doesn’t mean you’re from the SOUTH, you fucking dummies. So I don’t have patience for people here who try to hide behind the fact that it’s their heritage or something… it’s not. We all know what it means– It’s CODE for… I’m not voting for a black guy.

I’m so ashamed of the this area at times that I just want to move away to place with people with more open minds. But I feel like we’ll never BEAT this thing if people like my wife and I move away and stay silent or teach the kids right from wrong. And I’m feeling a bit embarrassed to be FROM here… I want to grab these IDIOTS by the shirt collars and shake them, yell in their face…. Don’t you see it!? Don’t you see what the fuck is coming??!! They’re even willing to vote for McCain and Republicans while they say they don’t agree with anything the McCain plan has in store…. they’re willing to vote that way just because they don’t want to see a black guy get elected president. It’s embarrassing to me. I’m embarrassed for them. I thought they’d be a bit smarter than this.

When I encounter the “rolling of the eyes” here when political discussions that pop up in public, and someone who says “well, I’m sure not voting for Obama”, I know what they’re saying. And I rebut them by saying things like… do you like the high gas prices? The cash grabs by these corporations? Do you like your JOB.. you know, the factory one you think you’re going to be able to retire with? You’d better think again. And if that doesn’t get them thinking, I tell them to think about the kids…. if you have kids who are 12 or teenagers, there’s a DAMN good chance they’ll be drafted into World War fucking 3.

WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! For the love of god, wake up!

On a lighter note… maybe the Obama campaign could combat this by starting a whisper campaign that he’s only HALF BLACK! Hah! Tell these morons… hey, this guy has white blood in him too. I don’t even know if that would help, they have a word for that too.

Here’s what I do know though. Obama should come here more often before the election, and I expect that to happen. The supporters here, we’re doing our best. But I think there’s something about the man himself that changes minds. For him to look you in the eyes and say, what’s troubling you? And then he gives you a solution to the problem, it’s one you can trust, and you can feel it.

My only hope for November 4th for this area is that the racist scumbags are too lazy to go to the polls or care. That my friends who have never voted before, pack their cars with their friends and get their parents out to the polls as well. I’m still pretty confident we will see a landslide in November of young voters who don’t show up in any of these polls you see that say it’s so close… but this doesn’t erase the fact that I’m still pretty embarrassed right now to be from Southwestern Pennsylvania.

On Sundays I get to do a lot of thinking and not much drawing. We have the kids football games pretty much filling up the entire day. Here are some things I thought about yesterday.

Tax bailout… conspiracy theories be damned, but it’s looking more and more like the New World Order plan that so many conspiracy dudes have warned would happen. Well, I’m not cool with it, conspiracy or not. Our tax dollars shouldn’t be used to bail out companies when CEOs are walking away with millions. I hope the Democrats stay firm here in making sure if this happens that they roll in a mortgage plan for regular people who are losing their homes… I’m down for that. But this bailing out of huge companies with our money and we’re not asked about it or even given details, not cool. Someone tell them to leave my tax dollars alone. Starting to look more and more like socialism than a free market.

Comics Comics Comics… When I have time to think, my mind floats through concepts I’ve had for years and years (decades). Somewhere I even have a list of concepts I’d like to do. This is the list I grabbed Hero By Night from a couple years ago, and while that was great, i know there are even better ideas on that list. So I sit and think, how will i get to all of these concepts and get them out there in some format? I’m leaning toward doing 80-120 page graphic novels I think. I have no idea what I’ll do with them when they’d be done, but I reckon that if I had a good solid book completed my options would be much better than where I sit at the starting line. Find a real and honest publisher? Publish myself, serialize it as a webcomic, then print as trade. Those are all the EASY parts. The hard part is getting started and picking one to go with. I think I’ve settled that I will not pick one from my old list until I have completed my plans with Flobots comic, which I’m not sure how long that will be…which leads to my next thought…

Almost done wrapping up the 2nd chapter of the Flobots comic, IRAQ. The 3rd chapter will be getting into some science fiction territory. I don’t really want to discuss too much more than that to spoil where the stories are going, but I promise that it will all tie together in a very cool way later on. I basically found a good story element that allows me to mix every day life stories with some of the SICKEST science fiction stuff I’ve ever dreamt up. I try not to think too hard about it, because it’s so powerful I believe it could melt minds. Stay tuned for that….. I will say though that yes, there will be FLOBOTS. Think robots, but only way the hell cooler.

400. That’s the number of Will Draw Anythings I’ve done so far. I wanted it to be more at this time, but time is a major problem when juggling so much. I still have 568 in the queue as of this morning and more coming in all the time. People don’t seem to mind the wait, which I greatly appreciate. Once I can get these BIG days out of the way, the 15 order days will breeze by. I think right now I’m going to limit myself to Will Draws and Flobots work. These two things make me the happiest work-wise right now.

Back to the drawing board…

Got a ton of work done today behind the scenes. 2 posters for the F-L-0 done that I’m pretty happy with, and more stuff I can’t speak of.

This afternoon, by way of NAIMoshe I discovered a new band “Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip” and have been digging on their work for a bit here. See for yourselves below…

The funny thing to me about hip hop and poetry like this, (beyond it being really refreshing to my brain), I just love the talented writing involved. In many ways to me, these lyricists like Jonny 5 or Brer Rabbit, and now Scroobius Pip are better storytellers than ANY comic book writer out there (well at least since Alan Moore)– My opinion of course, but listening to their lyrics and seeing how they are carefully crafted has inspired me much more in the past year than anything in the comic book market for sure.

Anyways, maybe I’m late in the game here, and everyone else have heard of these guys, if not… ladies and gentlmen, Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip…

I got about halfway through blogging yesterday and just closed out the screen. On purpose. I just felt like I was rambling on about people I don’t like or agree with, tearing into them, but I felt better after I typed it out, and then I looked it over and thought… ugh, what a waste of time and energy. It’s good to get things off your chest though, or out of your mind.

I’m busy enough now that my days can be completely filled with a variety of work from the Will Draws, to Flobots, and even some new Yirmumah strips. I feel very greatful to have things to do here, and I want to keep my nose down and out of other people’s drama. Something I wish more big mouths out there would do that too. I do think it’s hilarious that Lonestar Press has a LATE PAYMENT clock for Wowio on their website. 31 days late and counting! Hah!

I still have many creators emailing me on the side asking me about working with certain people or publishers and asking for my advice. I don’t really know what to say, if they’d just follow my blog or search around here they’d find plenty of my opinions. Beyond the other companies I’ve talked about, I don’t really think creators should go work with indy companies that don’t pay the creators upfront. It’s what Mark Evanier once called “Unfinanced Entrepreneurs” - It would be SOOOOOoo easy for me to run my own publishing company like that, getting tons of hungry creators to produce content based on promises of later successes or telling them I’d be pitching it to such and such, or really promoting their work. It’s just not right. I’ve taken a sort of firm stance that, if you can’t PAY, you shouldn’t play in this market, or any other really.

That goes for me too… Hell, I’d love to pay a colorist right now, but I can’t afford it. So I buck up and do it myself. I have a few guys, some that are good friends, who would totally color for me for nothing, but I don’t feel right. Plus, when you’re not being paid SOMETHING, you can easily lose focus and then become complacent and slack off or get late. I’d need someone CRAZY who would drop everything and color right behind me and be a solid train of content. It’s tempting to take up the offers, but I can’t do it. I value the time spent, just like I value any others, writers, letterers. I have to apply the golden rule to comic production, which is to do unto others as you’d have done to you. If you want a service done, you need to have the money to pay for it. It’s not good to do it just because of friends or collaborating, because that can often times ruin friendships. Trust me! I think Bob and I almost killed each other a few times.

On the homefront, I guess we’re putting in some kitchen cabinets this week. We had ordered them ages and ages ago (when we could afford them!) and now we have Bob’s uncle coming over to help us put them up. Much cheaper than hiring some professional cabinet dude for sure! There can’t be much to it, and come to think of it, I think I’ve done the basics of cabinet hanging before, but I want someone else involved so I can blame them if the cabinets fall, and my wife won’t be pissed at me! Shhhhhh!!!! We totally need cabinets in the kitchen though, we’ve somehow been winging it for the past 2 years, and it’ll make our lives a little easier and organized. So I’m told.

Speaking of that… we’re off to pick up said cabinets. Then I’m back here at the desk for WILL DRAWS the rest of the day.

It’s hard to believe it’s been SEVEN years since 9/11. I myself, like many other humans can remember vividly what we were doing at the time. And how we were glued to the TV in terror almost the rest of the day.

I remember that evening, feeling helpless and thinking about all the innocent people who were killed. It was definitely an overwhelming feeling of the world just STOPPING. Suddenly, nothing was funny, nothing was anything. I remember looking over and seeing this little scented candle jar in our house, (you know the kind you buy but never light for some reason), without even thinking, I grabbed it, lit it and put it out on the end of my sidewalk near the road. I’ve never ever lit a candle for anyone before, but it just happened on it’s own that night. I sat on the porch for a minute, thinking, is this a crazy bad dream I’m about to wake up from? I know I was pretty fearful as well constantly thinking there would be more the next day… explosions. Death.

When it became clear who was responsible for this in the days following, I was gung-ho just like many other Americans to get Bin Laden’s head on a platter ASAP. I remember the FUCK YEAH feeling when I heard we were going in to fuck up the Taliban’s day and hunt these assholes down. President Bush and his blustering “We’re gonna smoke you out of your cave!” type comments seemed… well, oddly manly and John Waynish at the time and nobody seemed to mind. It was like, no matter what party you were, or religion, everyone could agree we had to bring these people to justice.

That was seven years ago.

Seven years and Bin Laden is STILL out there. The tough talk just lead us straight into a global war (World War III, whether you like it or not) - And as an operation, we took our eye WAYyyyy off the ball. Around year 3 or 4, I thought SURELY we’ll find this dude soon…. but here we are seven years later. Seven. Years.

Sure, every now and then we’re told “a top Al Qaeda” douchebag was tagged… and they always say “The #2 or #3″ guy. Every time they say that! How many #2s or 3s are there! It almost just seemed convenient to remind us that there’s still stuff going on! Yup-Yup. But the CIA even disbanded their “Hunt for Bin Laden” group! The CIA! — I mean, hopefully they have ANOTHER ONE that we don’t know about… but seriously…. the fact that we haven’t gotten both of these douchebags, Zawhahiri or Bin Laden, is a serious failure. I don’t want to hear… “Oh, we can’t go into tribal regions in Pakistan because…” — I mean, for christ’s sake, we invaded and occupied an entire country that had nothing to do with 9/11.

So that’s how I remember today. I REMEMBER that these douchebags are still out there. I remember that our fearless John Wayne leader FAILED to get these douchebags. And I’m sickened how 9/11 is being used as a political tool. The video they showed at the Republican National Convention? Disgusting.

I’m frustrated as a citizen knowing that, somewhere in the back of my mind, the bad dream continues, and it won’t end until we know those two main douchebags are caught and brought to justice. Some say it won’t really solve or stop terrorism, but that’s not the point at all. The point is, these are the poster boys for terror, and we’ve never caught them. They put out videos and audio tapes from their hidey holes in Pakistan and it’s embarrassing. When I think about the whole thing, I can’t help but think, We’ve failed… we’re failing.

I have a nervous fear that before the election, they WILL capture Bin Laden or there will be a gruesome video of what’s left of his body on the news, and Bush will declare victory…. MCCain will use it as a political football proving that the Republicans have saved us all from the bad guys. conveniently right before the election.

But not so conveniantly, Seven years after the fact.

As many of my friends and readers here know, I made a homemade sign back in April during the Democratic primaries, it was stolen, my yard trashed– and it sort of fired up my political activity again. I thought drawing a story out about the first sign might cool me down a bit, but nope… so a glutton for punishment, or a patriot, I decided to make a sign that wouldn’t be as easy to steal, cemented into the ground. Here’s the video…

(note, we were laughing a bit at the beginning because someone peeled out on Bob when he was up on the street corner)

Find more videos like this on Fight With Tools

I think I was also passively aggresively called a kool-aid drinking cult follower today as well. Of course, these people don’t have kids or a real family to think the future about… it’s pretty easy to sit around and enjoy the here and now, sit on your ass and play video games and not do anything to really support the country you live in, or promote real change in your community. It’s easy to take those things for granted when you don’t have kids (I know)– but something changes when you grow up and have children of your own… you learn to look a little beyond your years, and realize that it’s not about YOU. It’s also bigger than a candidate… it’s bigger than Obama. Whatever it is, it’s inspired this jaded generation X’r to get off my ass and do something.

Unloading my mind here…

Today I’m working on nothing but WILL DRAWS. I’m very far behind, but not really. I can’t really help that I had days of 200 orders. It’s going to take some time to get them done, and the wait will be longer for people. I’ve had a couple people complain on the long wait, but others who are pleasantly surprised to get the “THANK YOU” email from me along with their drawing they had forgotten they ordered. So, if you place an order, just think of it as a delayed grenade of happiness later on! — The original idea was… if I get a few orders, I could easily keep up, but if I got swamped, then WILL DRAW ANYTHING has sort of become a webcomic of it’s own that updates multiple times a day, and allows me to pay a couple bills or buy groceries. So thanks to everyone for their patience and support.

Another funny thing related to WILL DRAWS. I get people offering me bigger jobs, but thinking that my page rates are super cheap just because the WILL DRAWS are. That is not the case, but for regular rates, I’m more than happy to give them out privately, but I might just post them so that I don’t get so many people thinking I draw comic pages or stories, or logos or advertisements for 2 dollars a pop.

Flobots comic updated today. In doing my research for the current story, I listened to a lot of vets and current soldiers stationed in IRAQ. I took 2 days to absorb myself in the reference, and put myself in their shoes, talk like them, think like a soldier. It was gut wrenching, and the first time I’d ever REALLY worked that way. When I first thought of doing a story about soldiers or IRAQ, I didn’t want to be pretending or making things up, so the events are an amalgamation of about 4 different REAL stories I was told. Really heart wrenching things. I also didn’t want to be preachy. Soldiers don’t talk about politics, they do their job. They talk like those characters talk, to pass the time. (although they use much more colorful language!)– Anyways, I have a profound respect for men and women in uniform, and I’m trying to tell their story and I hope in the coming weeks I can really put the readers out there who don’t know, into that soldier’s mind. It gives you a whole other perspective on the things we take for granted every day, every minute/second here in the States. if you see a man or woman in uniform, or hear someone is a vet, or see an oldtimer wearing a military ballcap…. tell them THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE! It doesn’t matter what they did, or what they saw… they did it for all of us.