D.J. Coffman - Sequential Artist, Thinker

Well my wife has gone to the beach with her Dad and Grandmother and Stepmother, and I’m holding down the fort at home with the kids for a week here.  They’ve had it pretty tough this year with the death of their grandfather on that side of the family, so hopefully some time away to clear their minds and just “get out” and see other things will help them all cope in different ways. My wife especially, who lost both her grandmother on one side of the family, and her grandfather on the other this spring. I’ve spent the past couple years going to all kinds of places and cities and such and leaving her with the kids, so it’s only fair when this trip was offered to her, pretty much all expenses paid, I wanted her to take it for her.

Plus, now I’m thinking this could be an AWESOME brownie point to try to go to Dublin Ireland in September with the Flobots to catch them on their European tour! muhahahahaah.. (she’d kill me) - I so would want to go to Ireland though and look up old family haunts there.

Odd that the very night she left, our youngest cat decided to go on a SPRAY fest of some kind… I was up until 2am cleaning things and searching for where he pissed, like a damn hound dog sniffing around. Meanwhile, my actual hound dog was of no help at all, just snoring and farting over in a corner. THANKS, DOG! — I got so peeved, I just put the cat out on the porch with food and water. He’s pretty much afraid to leave the general area of the porch so I didn’t reckon he’d run away. I tried getitng a hold of the vet to see if we could get him in before next monday for fixing, but I was told that he needs shots first and then you have to wait two more weeks before declaw and neutering. so… UGH…. I could just leave him outside, I felt too bad, so thanks to BOB for the idea of using the big dog crate we had as a little makeshift JAIL for the cat’s ass in the meantime. Hooked him up with litter and food and water, and it’s a MUCH bigger cage than what he’d get at the pound…. and much better than finding him as roadkill in front of my house too. Bob suggests I joke with my wife and tell her the opposite…. that I came home today and the cat was smashed all over the road and looks like he was torn apart by Apaches…. I meant helicopters, but Bob said it was funnier if I meant angry Apache Indians. I’m going to tell my wife that i pulled in with the kids to find the slaughterfest all over the road, and that the kids were crying and howling… then I’ll spring it on her. I don’t want to ruin her whole trip thinking there’s a dead cat painting our roadway. So for now… my basement is… CAT PRISON!

The Will Draw Anything Day was going good yesterday. I put a good dent in the orders, but then the Dr. Horrible pic I did ended up as a link on Whedonesque.com and a bunch more orders came in and erased the progress I made. I’m not complaining though, the more the merrier, I just hope people are cool with waiting during these busy periods. Hey, it’s only 2 bucks. I actually have some people paying me more than 2 bucks, saying they feel bad for only paying 2 bucks, which I appreciate, but it’s no necessary. Those Whedon fans are pretty nice people. I also got a job offer from a TV type blog to do something there, but I’ll have to think about it because I’m pretty busy right now with the FLO right now and other things.

I’ve already noticed that I’m WAY more comfortable doing penciling directly on the Cintiq now, and that’s going to save me time in the future here. I use to do pencils on paper and then scan, and then do inking and coloring on the screen– but it was just a matter of being faster and more comfortable with the tools on paper.  I’m working on the FIRST flobot installment done completely on the screen today, and should be posting that later tonight at Flobots.net, and then I’ll be getting back to more Will Draws as well. If it weren’t for the cat problem late last night, I probably would have been in the #90s by morning, but such is life!

Oh, today is also the first day of football practice for the kids too. Will have that all week to contend with in the evening, but it’s fun to get out and watch them play and have fun. So much of my working life has revolved around the net for the past 8 years… sometimes I’m tempted to just pull the plug and take a year off of online blogging and networking or posting in forums and that… just sort of do the basic things.. update the art, do my work and just go radio silent for a year. No drama, no headlines, no opinions from me… just good comics. I don’t know if I could ever “unplug” now though… the system…. has me….

Weekend update…

First… I just want to say thanks to a few online friends here. You know who you are, and there have been a bunch of you, Al, Scott, Glenn, Mark, Dan and more… You’re all right, I’ve been a crybaby a bit too much about my problems, and I need to move forward. I guess this just takes awhile to really SINK in under the anger and frustration, but I do feel it all melting away. I want to thank all of you for caring and being supportive and telling me the truth from the heart, and not from some personal agenda or something. It means a lot to me guys.

For a few weeks, my computer has been making a pretty rough sound, I figured it was a fan of some kind in there, but it was always really hard to get down and unplug everything and get it out of the desk cabinet. That’s one of my biggest pet peeves I think computer wise. First thing this morning I rearranged the desktop and brought the CPU back up top, just to keep it from getting all dusty. Still the sound would come and go and I couldn’t pinpoint which fan it was until now… when I was adjusting the CPU around on the desk i bumped the video wire from my Cintiq and heard the noise come on which made me immediately crack open the case to identify the vibration… it was the little video card fan rubbing on the edge of the chip under it. Annoying! So I kind of adjusted it for now I guess. Probably going to have to get a new video card at some point, but I was releaved to find out it was only THAT and not something major.

Work wise I’ve been focusing like a laserbeam on stuff for the Flobots, some new shirt designs which should be on their way to the printer very soon (like maybe today! the flobots don’t mess around!) — I can’t wait to see them out there, and as a fan, I want these shirts too! I need to come up with a more cute one for the female audience as well, that’s probably next on my agenda this week. So, anyways, that’s all good. I’ve officially signed on as their web assistant, handling a whole bunch of things for them, website design, updating, etc and I’m doing some more work with the non-profit side too soon. Lots, LOTS going on. That’s an understatement! Working with them makes me feel really good and gets me out of the mental funk I’d been in. The first chapter of the Flobots comic will wrap this coming week as well… then we’re taking it to whole other places and levels. So, if you’re looking for new comic stuff by me, check http://flobots.net

Will Draws: Thanks in part to the writeup and attention from Rich Johnston’s article I have a crap-ton of Will Draw Anythings to do. I plan on probably doing some today in a big batch, and then devoting the whole day tomorrow to doing them and getting semi-caught up. For one, they’re fun and keeping me sharp. Two, it’s weird the little job offers that are springing up from doing these. One thing that does annoy me are the people questioning the cost being too low, or some idiots out there assuming I’m desperate for money and that’s why I’m doing it… but wow, do the math!? Why would I draw 100 images only to make 50 bucks!?? It’s not really about the money at all. But yeah, for those waiting… I’m gonna get to your drawnings ASAP! Wasn’t expecting a rush of them like that… I’m gonna get to draw a whole bunch of variety of comic characters though, ones I’d never ever think to draw, like Multiple Man in a chorus line? Some Dr. Horrible stuff, etc… it’s a lot of fun, because… well, I LOVE to draw. — For the past couple years, I’ve barely had time to sketch for fun, and every time my pencil was hitting the paper it was for a specific project or deadline, so this is a breathe of fresh air. Fresh, crazy air.

New Toy: Snagged up a FLIP video camera. They’re tiny, and take 60 minutes of good video. Trevor Mueller of ASSHOLE, showed me an Ultra Series version when I was in NY, and it was pretty nifty. This MINO version is smaller than my iphone and charges with a built in battery.

Dr. Horrible: Is horribly AWESOME. Just watched Act 3… I want more of this! I reckon they won’t make more, but WOW, if they did, it would be something I’d pay for. I had already slapped down my 3.99 for the Itunes feed after watching part one. I’m not even a HUGE Joss Whedon fan or anything like that, I just like it because it’s so clever to me in some way. It would be FRAKKING AWESOME to get to draw a Dr. Horrible Webcomic or something. Expect fan art! One of my favorite things… highlight for spoiler: BAD HORSE is an actual fucking HORSE! hahahahah!Yeah… too awesome.

Dark Knight the movie: Holy. Shit. I don’t know if I can even classify this as a “super hero” movie. It is just one GREAT piece of film. You’ll hear all about it elsewhere, but two things from me here…. #1, from the first scene Heath Ledger OWNS the joker role and brings it to a whole other level of pschiotic greatness. When he walked in the scene I thought… “awh man, there’s Heath Ledger…” — and as soon as the head hits the pencil, for the rest of the movie I forgot it was Heath Ledger at all, until the VERY end when Bob brought it up to me and turned to say…. “Goddamn it man, that guy is a GREAT actor, there will never be anymore of him as the joker…” — and that just brought me WAY down. I seriously forgot it was Heath Ledger at all. — #2, I think Bob summed it up with the feeling when we walked out… ever been in a car accident or in the middle of danger and you’re now safe and happy to be alive? THAT was the feeling walking out of there. That was like being in the middle of several car crashes in a good way. — Oscar to Ledger because he fucking deserves it. Would that be the first real actor oscar to a comic book movie??? I’ve never seen an IMAX movie, nor do I know where an imax theater is around here, but goddamn it I want to go see this in IMAX now for sure.

Thats it for me… lots of drawing to attend to…

Batman Day! Going to see the 5oclock I guess. Can’t wait.

Lots of stuff going on behind the scenes, none of it I can really talk about right now, but I’m itching to show some new stuff off as soon as I can.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about certain negative situations that have been going on, and pretty much decided to ignore them all and move on. There are times where waves of anger come over me when I think about some of the bullshit being said out there online. The first instinct is to jump to my defense, or just keep telling the truth when asked questions, but I see that’s not a two way street. There are going to be idiots who spin things, and everyone seems to flock to a drama storm. It’s entertainment to them I guess. I wish people could know the details of things I’ve turned down doing… from dickhead legal moves that would really fuck up people’s days, to REALLY crude drawing requests. (you thought skullhumping was bad??? UGH…) - My only real agenda is to draw good comics, get paid doing it (on time would be nice) and be treated with just a SMIDGE of respect. My new rule I think is to just not work with assholes. Or if I’m working with top-secret assholes, the minute I discover they’re assholes in sheeps clothing, I’m out. It really disgusts me, people who put on a show to collect a check, say all the right things to the people. Sure, they’ll tell you how awesome you are, or how long they’ve been a “fan”, or SURE they check your site out regularly and love your work (SURE.), they even listen to ALL of your podcasts and “appreciate everything you do.”– but when it boils down to it, they’re just out for their own bottom lines. Forget about “creators rights” and all that, it just boils down to common decency and respect.

Somebody… I forget who, maybe it was multiple people (which means maybe I should buy a clue?), but somebody or multiple people suggested to me… why don’t I just look out for my OWN interests. My old friend Bob always would say to me “Why are you helping these other creators? Why are you sharing all this info about making money with webcomics?” — or he’d be baffled as to if I figured out something that worked for me, I’d share it with other creator friends of mine and encourage them. Some suggested i should be charging for it, make an ebook, start a consulting business…. but I just generally want to help people I guess. When a kid comes up to me at a show with a portfolio in his hand and wants a critique, it brings me a lot of JOY, even if they’re work isn’t Marvel/DC level quality, to be able to encourage them by saying…. hey, go launch this stuff on the internet as a webcomic. You’ll be seen EVERY DAY instead of just once a year at a comic book convention where editors are going to tell you to work on your perspective and anatomy and composition and layouts…. just go build your audience online! — I didn’t have that, so it’s such an AWESOME tool to me.

And I admit, it angers me and frustrates me to feel like I’ve been crapped on royally after doing so much GOOD for someone, opening doors for them, opening minds for them. I hope that NEVER makes me leary to act differently though. I don’t want to become a jaded old prick who never shares with the world.

Now my mind seems a bit open to a different world outside of “comics”, and I guess I’m applying the same thing there too. I have that rule that I sometimes end up breaking — the “don’t be a dick.” rule. I guess it’s hard not to come off like a dick sometimes when you’re doing satire or parody drawings, and people get upset. I end up breaking my no dick rule when others are being dicks to me. I guess sometimes I’m asking for it though. Maybe I should consider a preemptive “no dick” rule now? Like if I’m doing something, I should ask, will this make me be a dick later if I’m provoked?

Nah, that would be no fun.

Thought I’d share the sketchcard samples I did for Marvel and Lucasfilm a couple weeks ago– haven’t heard back from them. Doing the sketchcards are really fun though, I might be doing a bunch of Flobots ones soon, we’ll see. These were all done with Prismacolor markers… Here’s a look…

There’s been no “break” for me. Especially with not a steady paycheck coming in, I find myself back in freelance land doing some small jobs here and there. The little $2 dollar drawings I’ve done have actually brought in a few job offers for higher paying gigs, from company logos to blog headers… so I’m trucking along I guess.

I’m looking to kick the Flobots comic into a higher gear here. I did some writing and plotting and figuring out where it’s going on the sci-fi angle. I’m also thinking more along the lines of graphic novels for the future of my own projects, but I don’t want to jump in and commit to some giant project of my own right now.

I noticed I’ve been locked out of the Drunk Duck account to update Hero By Night or do anything over there (check pageviews). Not even a peep or heads up to me by anyone. They edited the header in a rush getting rid of the email the creator link and the Hero Gram Newsletter link. They also deleted the last entry saying Hero By Night is on extended hiatus, and all of the fan comments wishing it would come back. Another person on Twitter told me he voiced some critique on Drunk Duck in the forums , and his comments were deleted. So it appears, even if they don’t want it to, that Platinum Studios has adopted a sort of corporate fascist police state where while they have deals and contests going on, they can’t allow for ANY discourse in the conversation , or any critique of their services. They want new people and new contestants and their families, new investors to be able to come on and see that “EVERYTHING IS OKAY!” — Again… not very good business ethics at all going on there. I can’t say that it makes me very happy to report that, but I also can’t say that I really give a damn either.

Onward!

I’ve also done a lot less internet communication lately due to keeping myself busy. If I were to stop and “take a break”, i fear I might actually lose my mind or just drop over dead. Sort of like Samson and his hair or something, you know?

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

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.

I woke up and came to turn on my computer and was greeted with this at my station…

It’s an origami Llama. It had a note with it that said “Happy Early Father’s Day Dad” - It appears as though my son Dillon is some sort of origami savant of some kind. He tells me he could have done a much better job if he had official origami paper, I didn’t even know such a thing existed, but I think it’s absolutely awesome the way it is. It’s funny that something so small can bring me such overwhelming joy inside, and this is the type of thing that will stay in my office until I’m old and gray and an official “curmudgeon”

I treated myself to a set of Prismacolor markers. I use to use them ages ago for commissions, but moved all digital around Y2K. I’ve been pretty jealous of the awesome little pieces I see done at conventions or the sketchcards I see around, and I’ve been itching for almost a year to get back into that. Now I can.

The future of Hero By Night is still up in the air. All is quiet on the western front. I won’t lie and say I don’t find it a little bit disheartening, but I don’t expect them to drop everything else they have going on to address my wants and needs. I’m honestly just very happy that I’ve been paid some of what I’m owed, and that was what was most important in the here and now. I just wish things could have worked out differently or on time and schedule. I won’t speculate any further on that, I’m going to just give them some time, about a month at least, before contacting them again about these things, but hopefully everything gets caught up and resolved sooner than that.

I also should have, but was not aware of all the people who actually cared about Yirmumah. I have quietly fired that back up again, and I’m doing it “for fun”, the way it was originally intended. But I’ve already had old Club Members ask if they can begin paying their club fees or supporting it in some way. I’m reluctant to do anything like that until I can prove that I can deliver or won’t be flaking out or quiting in a couple weeks. Yirmumah seems to have been my “constant” over all these years in comics, so it feels good to kick those tires again, and LAUGH. I might warn that there will be some naughty language there and more mature humor. It’s up at a new URL, http://yirmumah.com — a clean slate.

The Flobots comic is quietly up and running as well at http://flobots.net - I’m in what I call a “beta” launch there because I don’t want to heavily pimp it until I get to a certain point of content where new people can come in and get the jist of the stories. Flobots the band are out on tour right now and pretty busy, but they’ll be popping up some ads and pimping it on their sites too– in fact, behind the scenes they asked me to do concept and designs for merchandise like shirts, they’ve also given me work on various websites and cool fun projects. I’m really honored to be working with them. Again, it blows my mind, because just a couple months ago, I was emailing them blindly not knowing they were about to blow up on the charts. The two things I truly love about these guys is their Do-It-Yourself work ethic and the fact they have a heart and care about a lot of social issues and making the world a better place.

Another odd thing I noticed… I had a headline on the Newsarama Blog without even trying. Jason and I would often wonder why we couldn’t get Hero By Night news releases on there, and we always got the feeling that people liked US and OUR work, but distrusted our publisher. I thought it might just be paranoia, but there were many times we sent in releases or previews and they were never posted. The only time we could make “comic news” there was when drama with the publisher was going on, and it use to frustrate the hell out of us. But suddenly, unprovoked, I get the headline about the Flobots comic, and it felt really good to have that acknowledged without trying so hard. So thanks to Newsarama for help in getting the word out for me.

In a way, meeting the Flobots and seeing what they’re up to made me miss the days of mailing out stacks of fake bricks in the mail.

Tim Russert Dead. I can’t really believe it, and it makes me sad. I know I didn’t KNOW the guy or anything, but I’m a fan of awesome journalists, people I know I can turn to to get the straight dope. He was one of, if not THE best. He had that devilish irish twinkle in his eye, and I always loved hearing him tell his personal stories on TV. Really sad to go, and to go on the beginning of a Father’s Day Weekend. They should build a statue of him in front of NBC, and give out awards in his name. He was just that type of journalist and human being. The world, our country lost a great patriot on Friday.

As if that weren’t shocking enough, I heard from Jason Embury, my friend and colorist last night, he was just at the ER where they think his Dad had a heart attack. Last I heard he was okay, but WOW, Jason’s family has been in our thoughts last night and this morning. Heart attacks are scary things, they make me worry about myself. They seem like they can come from nowhere, like the roll of the dice. Anyway, best wishes to the Embury’s this Father’s Day Weekend.

No post yesterday. I was kinda busy working on other things.

Not much sleep last night as the dog was up lurking around and making noise, then the hamster wheel started whirling. I thought to myself at 6am, this isn’t me being tired.. this is me about to test myself, to push myself. So that’s what I’m gonna do.

It’s been ironic to me that ever since I went on hiatus with Hero By Night, it was in the #1 position at DrunkDuck and I couldn’t figure out why, besides the rush of new curious people looking for drama, most of the traffic was still coming from Yirmumah.net. I’ve turned off those spickets and now you’ll likely see HBN drop way down or out of the top 10 perhaps. I had given it all the prime advertising spots on Yirmumah, even though that comic wasn’t running it still got a good deal of traffic because of all the links out there since 2003, and the beauty of topic tagging. That was probably retarded to do on my part, because I could have been making some money from those ad spots, but like anything I’m working on, I wanted to give it my all.  I still get hate mail from Beau Bice fans.

The markers I’ve been waiting forever to get our arriving today. They will aid me in some upcoming design work I’m doing for Flobots, possibly doing some sketch cards and commissions. Gotta pay those bills, and with the economy in the toilet and people tightening their belts everywhere, I’ll just have to work even harder.

A couple funny things found this morning while reading through boards… Over on the DAILY CARTOONIST, there’s an interview with Jim Davis of Garfield fame, where he mentions the last comic he laughed at was Scott Kurtz’s PVP and that pretty much webcomics are where it’s at. In the comments section there, Scott Kurtz posted a tongue in cheek “IN YOUR FACE!!!” comment and it erupted to over 60 comments. My theory now is, just scan that page at Daily Cartoonist and look for the comment counts…. you’ll see 1 comment, 3 comments, maybe even sometimes a whopping 14 comments, but if you see 40 or more, you know it’s a lively discussion about webcomics that more than likely involves Scott. Say what you will, it’s entertaining. He knows how to “sell the drama”. Drama is like the fucking FORCE, and I think a lot of us have ended up mastering it for use for a greater good, instead of hammering each other over the heads with it.

And Newsarama has a roundtable interview about the webcomics business being recession proof.

Webcomics…. it’s the way of the future. It’s the way of the future. It’s the way of the….

Been up since 6am again. Yeehah. Spent about an hour trying to wake up and dealing with itchy eyes that only get itchier when you rub them. Suck. I took an allergy pill which is like rolling the dice to see if I’ll pass out over drowsyness or not, but sometimes it makes you wired. I guess i’m somewhere in between.

You know what kinda sucks? When people are only reading my blog to get updates on Platinum Studios or to see if there’s some sort of drama. I’ve noticed the increase in traffic and return users and IP addresses and where in the country they are (yeah, I know who you are)– I’m kinda sick of thinking about all of it, and seeing things mentioned on news blogs or fucking complete idiots chiming in and speculating on things. I now feel like there are dudes I don’t even know watching my blog to see if I’ve been paid, so they can run and complain and pitch a bitch that they haven’t been paid, but not understanding that many of us have different deals set up. There was even an email sent out from the COO to creators that someone passed on to Rich’s gossip column. I never got that email, probably because my situation was already public, but that was the first time I had really read it. But seriously, it’s probably not a smart move, especially if you’re owed money, to be sending those emails around, no matter how ridiculous you think they are or how you think it was a veiled legal threat or something. UGH. Probably not a good move on anyone’s part.

All that being said, the good news for me is a check finally came in the mail (I’m not saying from where ), and it’s given me some money to catch up on my bills and financial situation here. It didn’t come in time to save the Hero By Night situation, but I’m sure it’ll all work out in some way. I’m going to have to focus on setting up some other things now instead of having all my eggs in one basket. That IS my fault I guess. I’ve had friends warn me of that for awhile and i didn’t listen. I like throwing myself into something 100% like I’ve done with HBN and I think it shows. But yeah, I guess i need to invest my time into some other eggs.

Here’s one of the eggs now.

The other one probably starts with a Y and ends with an H.

I’ve been up since about 6am. Got up with my wife who was headed off to her new job. Is it strange that I miss her, even though we would have just been in bed with a basset hound likely trying to nudge us both out of bed? Well either way, when she’s out working a day job, I try to match her schedule sleep wise so it’s fair. It means going to bed earlier, and waking earlier, but I figured I could get cracking into some work today.

So far, I’ve got nothing done but some writing and a lot of dreaming. I guess you have to sort of “power up” and get psyched to go do something. Today I’d like to approach the page in a different way. I’ve been thinking about “format” and how some people think it’s a limitation, but I love it. I love thinking about what can be done in limited spaces or panel shapes. I like that comics like Penny-Arcade haven’t strayed far from the 3-panel approach. I like that Watchmen is basically a 9 panel grid system. With the Flobots comic, I’m approaching it as a 3 tier structure system. Loosely based/inspired by Darwyn Cooke’s work on DC’s New Frontier. He basically uses the setup as if it were storyboards. I admit, I’m pretty lousy right now at filling that content, but it’s interesting to look at and pace out. I know I could pack so much more into one page or one tier, and I’ve already strayed from the format a bit, but I’d really like to figure it out. I also know it doesn’t make for really satisfying daily updates, but I do think it can balance by giving the readers something interesting to look at each day. I may have to adjust things a bit to go back to the “3 stack” and just put out pages M-W-F as full pages. If you think about it, it’s only 3 pages a week, 9 panels total, or less if you combine tiers for half splashes, etc….. yeah, I’m a format nerd.

I’ve gotten a lot of requests for interviews or quotes on my situation with Hero By Night. People still want to twist it into a creator rights issue or “D.J. was screwed over”, and no, no, no. I haven’t been screwed over at all. Sure the situation sucks, but if everyone knew the entire level of everything going on, even I don’t know it all, it just is what it is. “Late” pay isn’t being screwed over, it’s just late. And I’m a real structured guy, where I do my budgets and setup my bills and stuff on money I know will be there on X date and whatnot, and I do my best to save for rainy days. This was a situation where my rainy day money dried up, and it was sort of writing on the wall that this wasn’t going to last in it’s current game plan, so I had to adjust and reorganize here. First and foremost, my family takes priority. It was a really depressing decision, but I’m feeling a lot better this week. In fact, I think I should be getting something this week in the mail money wise, so that has really brightened my spirits a bit, even though I’ll have to hand it over to bill collectors and things I owe… but still, I don’t have much to complain about in the grand scheme of things.

I do think it’s ironic that ever since putting it on “hiatus” we’ve been #1 on DrunkDuck.com - I guess at least it’s brought some new people to check out the HBNiverse.

I was out throwing chicken on the grill last night when I got a call that came up as Universal Studios on the caller ID. And the guy, I can’t remember his name, said something to do with an Hero By Night Animation, which flabbergasted me, but it turned out to have something to do with the versions we’re doing for the Splastik player, but i had no idea how Universal had anything to do with that, neither did Platinum when I asked. Who knows, maybe the guy was just calling from Universal’s offices, hah! Anyway, I can’t wait to see those moving around and played out by voice actors, it should be fun, and it should be coming soon.

9am has crept up on me here. Grabbing more coffee an hitting the drawing board for real this time.