D.J. Coffman - Sequential Artist, Thinker

Well I looked over the new Wowio contract with Platinum’s new items listed in the contract amendments and I’m going to have to pass on it, here’s why.

There will be new multiple ways for you to monetize your content, let’s take a look at the actual text and I’ll give you my own personal beefs with it.

1.      AMENDMENTS TO AGREEMENT.  The terms and provisions of the Agreement are hereby amended as follows:

1.1    EXPANSION OF GRANT OF RIGHTS.  In addition to the grant of rights by Publisher under the Agreement, Publisher hereby grants and conveys to WOWIO the following rights in and to the Content:

The right to display page images derived from Content for free in a web browser with interactive display advertising (“PREVIEW”).

* BOOM. Right off the top you’re essentially giving them the right to use the content inside your ebooks as pretty much “webcomics” that they’ll monetize by selling advertising and boost their pageviews. They go on to say they’ll give you 20% of any advertising made, more on that in a bit…

Publisher shall have the option through the Publisher account interface to make “Ebooks” eligible for sale and to set a sale price (“ECOMMERCE OPTION”). If Publisher elects to activate the Ecommerce Option, Publisher hereby grants Company the right to sell Ebooks without embedded advertising. The default setting for this option is “inactive”.  For purposes of the Agreement “Ebooks” shall mean self-contained electronic files, one format of which shall be Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format.

* The thing that made Wowio work in the first place was free downloads. If I’m going to sell PDFs to my fans I can do that myself direct over my own website. Sure there will be creators and publishers who don’t know how to do this, and this will seem like an easy service to use, but you’ll be giving up HALF of your sales to them. 50/50 just seems ridiculous to me, and in my own personal opinion there is no market for selling these ebooks, other people have tried and failed miserably.

Publisher shall have the option through the Publisher account interface to make Ebooks eligible for free distribution with embedded advertising when sponsors are available (“SPONSORSHIP OPTION”). If Publisher elects to activate the Sponsorship Option, Publisher hereby grants Company the right to distribute Ebooks for free with embedded advertising. The default setting for this option is “active”.

*”When” Sponsors are available? What happens when sponsors aren’t available? That seems really vague. Who’s going to be in charge of getting sponsors now? Platinum?!? UGH.

1.3    ROYALTIES.  Schedule A to the Agreement is hereby deleted in its entirety, and the following shall constitute the Royalties payable to Publisher under the Agreement:

For revenues derived from Preview, Publisher shall receive 20% percent of the quarterly gross advertisement revenue generated by interactive display advertising on pages that contain page images from Publisher’s Content.

* This was what set off alarm bells in my head initially. So, they’ll be using your content to generate pageviews that you have no way of accessing, nor do you know how much advertisers are paying, so you have to just trust whatever they say you made off of pageviews without any system of checks and balances mentioned. In light of Platinum Studios telling me that Hero By Night only generated 800 bucks in ad revenue for a webcomic that has been online since October 2006 and consistantly had the HIGHEST pageviews on all of Drunk Duck… I don’t have faith that they can either A. figure out real well paying advertisers, or B. tell the truth about how much they actually made off of web advertising revenue. You might find yourself in the same position of asking… wait, we had all these pageviews and we only made 50 bucks this quarter? — and they’ll say something like, Well, that was the going CPM…  better luck next time. I also don’t think it’s an accident that they’re only willing to cut YOU in on 20% of their web revenue… but hey, why wouldn’t they cut you in on 50% of that? I mean, they want 50% of YOUR ebook. That just doesn’t seem well thought out at all, and it smells bad to me.

For revenues derived from Ecommerce Option, Publisher shall receive 50% percent of the quarterly gross revenue generated by sales of Ebooks of the Publisher’s Content.
For revenues derived from Sponsorship Option, Publisher shall receive (i) 50 cents ($0.50 USD) per download for eTexts of less than 100 pages; and (ii) One dollar ($1.00 USD) per download for eTexts of 100 pages and above.
All Royalties shall be paid to Publisher on a quarterly basis, within 45 days following the end of each calendar quarter.

* Couple things here... again, the thought of splitting 50/50 profits on an ebook sale with anyone is ridiculous to me. And the part about when you’re SUPPOSED to be paid, turns my stomach a little in the light of the situation I was in with Platinum. I’m guessing everything will go smoothly during the “transition” period when the old Wowio people are still managing things.. but when the keys are handed over to Platinum, I’ve got a BADDDddddddd feeling about people being paid on time. That’s not an assumption, that’s a proven fact, regardless of the articles written about creators owed, printer representives telling me they were owed and COMIC BOOK NEWS sites telling me they were owed money… and the Drunk Duck kids over there, there was a bunch of “mobile wallpaper” people never paid. I have a really good friend who had his wallpapers up through their service before, and when he asked, he was told that “none sold” but he knew better because his own family had boughten them from the site!!!! — Anyways, THAT’S who will be running this shindig now. That’s who owns them. You have been warned.

To end things off… even if I wanted to stay on under Wowio with my other ebooks I had there… I got a follow up email asking to FAX the form in signed ASAP so they could get it back to me. I think someone in management is out of touch, because not that many comic creators have fax machines these days. It almost sounded to me like if there was a contest and you needed to send in videos, they’d ask for VHS. That’s neither here nor there. I mean… you’d think Wowio would say, get us a signed PDF file… right? Maybe they don’t know how to sign it and send it back? Who knows….

Anyways, that’s why I’m bailing. Had it not been for Platinum being involved and buying them out, maybe I’d be able to trust the system a little bit more. I’d have more faith in Wowio too if they hadn’t actually, well, basically if you look at it, they PAID Platinum to buy them out with shares. That doesn’t sound like a company that was doing very well for itself, and they must not have had many more offers if they settled with Platinum, a company in the midst of a bunch of public money trouble. That’s not inside information, that’s public information that anyone can look up at the SEC.gov site.

Good luck to everyone.

It’s very strange how i seem to have been able to get TONS more work done while a whole bunch of drama has broken out since Sunday. Sigh.

UPDATE HERE: I just received a cease and desist letter from Platinum about using the HeroBynight.com, and HeroByNight.net addresses that I’d bought and hosted for the past two years. I did have them pointing to my djcoffman.com site, after I stopped receiving payments on time, and didn’t want the money I had spent to advertise on places like Comic BOok Resources to go promoting the project that was dead in the water. I’m putting it all back the way it was now, or just putting the URLS up for transfer to them, no problem.

I was just writing up a pretty detailed and opinionated blog here, commenting on the recent Publishers Weekly Article about Platinum Studios clear and present financial troubles, and Platinum posting their part of the full interview on their new “Platinum blog” - I caught a link on the Hero By Night page quoting on there just how much money they say I’ve made in the past 20 months and how much money they SAY they put into Hero By Night…. Some of it is totally true, but I’d like to ask anyone out there that knows comics, did you ever once see an AD for Hero By Night in any other trade magazines, at shows? Anything? The only advertising they did for the Hero By Night comic book was the listing in Previews. That’s it. I saw on a balance sheet they hurriedly threw together a line that said “24,000″ for “marketing” costs, and immediately had asked what that was for??! 24k? Nobody really knew, but different people said they assumed it was for the “Free Comic Book Day” issue… which might I add would have been for Gunplay and Comic Book Challenge… so it was odd to see that listed on a sheet as an expense for Hero By Night alone, but I know companies do this all the time to really pile on the “costs”—

But man, what I could have done with 24k in marketing money. UGH… it hurts my brain a little to think about it. One time I had asked for like, 500 bucks extra to buy some ads around on some different comic sites. I was told that it wasn’t worth it to advertise on Newsarama, or Comic Book Resources. But from my own marketing and branding background, to me, I thought, well I want logo where the target audience can see it. So, I actually bucked up and started spending some of my OWN money to advertise for Hero By Night, and our website pageviews went up because of it. — That balance sheet also said something to the effect of they only made 800 bucks in Ad money from the site. I shook my head, flabbergasted, because i know how much money other webcomics have made, or even I had made ni the past. It occured to me, and I asked, that maybe someone was fudging numbers, or just not using the RIGHT ad networks… hell, we could have made more money than that off of well placed and desiged GOOGLE ads. — I made more off of googleads sitting on an old archive with half the traffic I was bringing in. …  I won’t even get into the convention aspect. While we DID go around to a lot of shows in the “Drunk DUck” section they bought up of Artists Alleys at Wizard world shows, there were times we had dinners that could have paid for an entire publisher booth and been taken more seriously. When I asked about San Diego Comicon, or setting up there, I got the feeling from everyone that it would just be a “huge pain in the ass.” and not worth the work. The biggest comic show in the world….. and they’re not present inside? Now, with COmic Book Challenge going on down the street the past two years, fine, I could understand that, but again… 24k in marketing?? Where? Why?

So yeah, that boggles my mind. 24k? Brian just passes me off as any creator who would complain to a publisher about not enough promotion. But the guy’s problem is, and he admitted this to me is, he just doesn’t KNOW comics. For all intents and purposes, and not a surprise to many, Platinum isn’t in the comic BOOK business.

This was another private reason I flew off the handle like I did back in late May and June. It was only in APRIL right before the Pittsburgh Comicon that Brian Altounian and Scott Rosenberg had called me on the phone, very excited, offering me a position IN the company. A big position, one that they’d be willing to move my entire family out for, relocation… I’d of been in charge of a lot of things and righting the ship on marketing, branding, and making money with their digital side of things. They figured I had been yammering in private “consulting” with them in what was wrong and HOW EASY it was to fix all these things. Many of the ideas I brought to the table became winning things for them behind the scenes. How easy it was to post a blog on your site listing what books you have comign out, offering Previews up, just very basic comic book and webcomic marketing things. I was ecstatic at this offer, and nervous as all hell. But I did believe that THIS could have been a real chance for me to get out there with boots on the ground and FIX things internally and change the perception out there…  That was a BIG life changing decision…. but I was confident I could easily do this job for ANY comic or entertainment company that was as serious as I was about the effort…

2 weeks after that, my checks stopped coming on time. I was told there was “no money” to pay anyone. When I asked what was up with our print schedule, no word… nothing. Imagine how incredibly frustrating it must have been to one day be offered some big wig job, then very shortly after, not know if you’ll be able to pay your bills on time. That was a big factor in me going public… and forget about my own disgruntledness, imagine how pissed MY WIFE was about all of this? I mean, that is some serious business there to go through. Instead, all I got was no communication with Platinum after the first Rich Johnston column came out. Nothing but the one email telling me they had changed their mind about the print and web rights because I talked.

And so now, that brings it all up to date.

I had one question for Platinum Studios though… if they accuse me of releasing inside information in my second contract, which they then indeed terminated me from, — but in their article they just published, and that employees went over to the HBN fan page and repeated just how much money they say they spent on Hero By Night, AND how much money they say they paid me in the past 20 months…. isn’t that confidential information, and doesn’t that then break their FIRST original Comic Book Challenge contract with me? I mean, I know they’re mad that I rained on their bullshit tea party, but let’s all use our brains a little here. What was the point of that? To say …. “Hey guys, DJ made money, he shouldn’t be angry.”

Yeah… seriously messed up business ethics going on out there. I use to wish they would FIX this, but I’m afraid it’s only gotten worse.

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

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

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.

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!

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.

This might be a long one… here it goes!

So, I’ve visited a few of the “news” and blog links about the new of me putting Hero By Night on hold. I’ve noticed that quite a few people are pushing their own agendas and grudges and passions in regards to this issue, and painting it with a broad brush as if I’m a creator who’s been screwed over by Platinum Studios, and even that I’ve “separated” with the company– this is just not true.

The DJ from two years ago, would have told someone like Lea Hernandez to go sit on something and spin if I read a post like she wrote this morning. “D.J. Coffman splits with Platinum over non-payment” — which anyone saying non-payment, it’s more like “late payment” which isn’t a crime. What really irks me again is, that crowd, the same crowd of people I fought with back then, still paint this as a creator rights issue, when it certainly is not. If I was out there complaining about that, or saying I was fooled or bamboozled, that would be another story. I knew from DAY ZERO what I signed, what I renegotiated, and again, at least MY contract is a solid deal. In fact, not to spite my face here, but I probably had one of the BEST contracts Platinum has EVER drawn up, and they were happy about it and so am I. Present tense. Can everyone get what I got? Probably not. I’m pretty damn driven and I deliver a TON for anyone I work for. Anyone. Ask anyone I’ve worked for– So I was bringing a lot to the table, handling a lot of things, and doing a lot more than just drawing a book and waiting for a check to come. — People like Lea, who I actually don’t have anything against now– she’s PASSIONATE about these issues of creator ownership and rights and that– but I don’t fall into that category. I willingly, knowingly and ON PURPOSE made my deal with Platinum because it works for my situation, and believe you me, I was more than fairly treated!— I think it’s way unfair for them to whip out that old brush right now and lambaste Platinum over the creator rights and contract issues– How could that even be brought up in my case, whenever I’ll likely still walk away with the rights— and it may shock you to know that it would be my choice with Hero By Night either way, to have Platinum represent it for Film and TV, because the people there working those departments are some of the best people in the world. — Is that cheerleading? No– that’s telling you that behind what people perceive as some evil corporation only worried about the bottom line, there are GOOD people who would go to the ends of the earth for you. Sure it’s not PERFECT— nothing is. — But to paint a broadstroke and say the way she wants it should be for ALL CREATORS, like “I’m Lea Hernandez, this is how you should do stuff, or you’re a big dummy.” — Nah. That’s ridiculous. — The old me would have called her a name, and told her to shut her piehole, then laughed and chuckled at the online drama that would ensue as pageviews inflated across the board, OH, DRAMA, YOU SWEET BITCH!– the NEW and IMPROVED me actually thanks her for being PASSIONATE about this stuff. It is VERY important, and future generations will be reading all we talk about, long after we’re dead and gone. There are totally things I have that I would never sign to anyone, for ANY price. It’s true. Yirmumah is not for sale.

Someone like Scott Kurtz, who I’ve been at odds with in the past as well, can actually see the many sides of this spectrum. Scott, it seems, has learned to not just open his mouth and speak from the heart spontaneously, even like I use to, but to take an issue and disect it and look at all the points. They pointed out on their Webcomics Weekly podcast a while back, that EVERY CONTRACT can be negotiated. You totally shouldn’t just sign something put in front of you without reading it, if you don’t understand the language, have a lawyer explain it to you, and KNOW WHAT YOU WANT. Because of course the other side of a contract wants whats best for them too. That’s why it’s an agreement! — Well, I’m proud of Kurtz and crew for not getting embroiled in DRAMA for the sake of Drama. There’s a certain crowd in webcomics, myself included, that have all GROWN UP, and we all see the much bigger picture… it might shock you to know, that we’re all working together, exchanging ideas, systems— SHARING to make everyone stronger. Even the dudes who are beating all of our asses by drawing stick figure comics.

I still feel a bit painted like I got screwed over here– don’t use me as an example of that with the creator rights issues. It was all a financial decision on my part, and it’s safe to say I’ve made more money with Hero By Night than if I would have been self publishing it, or doing webcomics. And I have a BIG stake in it. Like I said, this was all about timing and the fans, and money. Not non-payment, but “late payment”- - In my situation and budgets here, for MANY creators actually its like this, I have to be paid on time. I’ve always made that clear with everyone throughout time and space. All of that stuff WILL work out.

The only reason I HAD to bring this up publicly was for the fans. There was an “ongoing” series going on, which we have to work well ahead on, readers order well in advance and buzz was building– Behind the scenes I was nervous that issue 4 wasn’t going to make it to deadline, I busted my ass to make sure I beat my deadlines like usual. But with certain circumstances coming up, i just knew no matter what, it wasn’t going to make it to the printer. For too many reasons actually– and I couldn’t leave readers not only hanging, but they’re now ordering issue 5 in Previews— I didn’t turn in the issue 6 cover for the August Previews either– I could have— but I don’t want to be a part of what’s WRONG with the comic industry and that distribution system, late books, and readers never know why— This isn’t ANYTHING news, it happens ALL THE TIME– just this past couple weeks companies like Archaia who have HIT books like Mouseguard are announcing they are RESTRUCTURING (aka broke!)- TokyoPop, same thing thing, maybe even worse.

And behind the scenes at MANY indy comic publishers, things are pretty damn bleak I’ve been told. Sure, it would be easy to blame it on the economy– but that’s a fucking cop-out like non other– this is entertainment dollars, and go look at what INdy Jones, Iron Man and even Sex in the City just made, with higher ticket prices, higher everything prices. — In comics the problem is… drum roll…. the direct market.

TokyoPop’s CEO has a quote, that’s less of a copout - “TOKYOPOP CEO and Chief Creative Officer of the TOKYOPOP Group, Stuart Levy, explained the reasons for the reduction in output. “The time is now for us to focus our publishing business to overcome current market challenges. Few releases will allow for less cannibalization at retail. We must adjust our overhead to properly execute this new business plan. We are doing it with a heavy heart. It involves saying goodbye to 39 of the most talented, creative and compassionate people I’ve ever known.”"

“current market challenges” — are that people will eat comics up for free online, and INSTANT, while in the comic industry you have to rely on preorders and people, REAL people, going into comic shops to ask to preorder a title they weren’t going to carry in the first place. Oh, and current market challenges are also that by my estimation 75% of comic shops out there REALLY FUCKING SUCK when it comes to customer service. I can’t tell you the number of times online (you can go check the site for yourself in the comments alone) that my readers online have told me “we tried to order over at Joe Fuckbrain’s Comicverse, but they treated us like idiots” “They wouldn’t order it for me.”— I actually CALLED a store once after a reader told me this, and I told them the situation and asked why my reader couldn’t preorder the book– they just said “because we don’t carry it.” — but, wait, they have money in hand and ready to pay in advance??— “We just don’t do special orders here.” —- Many shops WILL, but still, even to get a new person through those doors asking for a preorder… they fucking blew it. — So for a title like mine that relies on kind readers to preorder, and only relies on ONE big page in a Previews catalog that ONLY the insiders of this insulated market see— well, for me, and many others, it’s not enough to sustain a title.

WEbcomics are where it’s at of course. You’re going to see, you’ve ALREADY seen, a bunch of print publishers trying to come on this scene and define it, when it’s already been defined. They’re laughed at privately by the real scene. When a company comes on with their exciting idea to have PDF downloads available, or just slap their print comics online– or check out their awesome new WEEKLY update—- webcomic readers don’t care about that. Webcomics is about MUCH more. Comics are about MUCH more. Read McCloud’s Reinventing Comics,page 56 “Negative Land” to understand how complex this “market” is, how many middlemen there are and then page 72.. chapter called CONTACT– that’s the future of comics.

Contact, communication. Transparency. — As far as companies owing creators money, that’s nothing new either, Crossgen, Dabel Bros, just two of the companies that spring to mind who have had headlines about this on major news sites, not to single them out— but it is what it is. The truth is, the money to pay creators WAS there at some point, but it was mismanaged, maybe too many softball games at Crossgen– they had an employee cafeteria there so I heard! Wow, fancy! Big and fancy, Crossgen had a friggin COMPOUND to work from– they blew through money like it was a bad habit on a relapse day. I’ve seen companies have extravagant parties, expensive dinners, really put on a show. Shoot, it even looks to a lot of people like WIZARD MAGAZINE might be going under soon or in some serious trouble currently –

The REAL bottom line is that creators are the LIFE BLOOD of anything, creator owned or not in comics. They need to be paid FIRST and kept happy, or shit will hit the fan– history proves that. Some ignore it. LOTS ignore it, hoping that they’ll get that one big payoff. The companies need to REALLY understand COMICS and creators before stepping into this playing field. The second thing is, you HAVE to respect the audience. So many companies have gone belly up because they didn’t do this ONE thing. They never GOT IT. It’s so fucking simple.— Such a complex thing, because even if you have all that stuff going for you, your stories, concepts, books, movies, webcomics, tv shows, dancing wallpapers– CAN ALL STILL SUCK. And guess who will be the first to tell you that…. the readers. They use to just tell you with their wallet— now they tell you online in news and blogs that they’re unhappy with you– and it’s easy to ignore conversations. I like taking them head on– that’s what makes me such a defender of the folks and things I believe in.

Ok– much actual WORK to get done today– there will be some fun posts this week about Flobots stuff, so tune in. I’ll write later today about my Flobotic Adventure to Cincinnati and how my wife and I drove home against tornadic weather. I think it was the government trying to hit me with a tornado. WEATHER CONTROL, MAN! WEATHER CONTROL!

Kids didn’t have school today. I slept in. Now I’m up and working away on Top Secret Project X and other things.

I’ve been in and out of sour moods the past week. A lot of friends have asked what’s wrong, etc… and I’ve kept it pretty vague and I’m sorry about that— But in clear transparency, it’s Mostly based on the fact that I’m, uh, pretty much BROKE and waiting on pay to come, which hasn’t come yet for vaguely unknown reasons. I’m sure it will all be okay, but in the meantime, there are bills to pay and such. I’ve been struck with a mini panic that I should be doing something else, possibly looking for a job or starting to do commissions (caricatures) or something to earn some side safety cash. But yeah, things are pretty friggin unstable right now all around, but not to worry….

You’d think that would make someone really on the edge or nervous. Sometimes it can be downright depressing– but there are big moments where I just like to embrace the unknown. When you struggle against the current of where the universe is taking you it often brings you more problems. It’s always best to just go with the flow and not worry too much about where it’s taking you.

You kinda HAVE to think that way if you’re going to remain creative during tough times. I think of it almost like a test or something. Discipline!

All that being said…. I hope the mail delivers my check THIS week or there’s going to be a fucking meltdown of some kind that I won’t be able to keep under control because it will be out of my hands entirely. Literally. Vague enough for you?

______________________other items on the brain….

Oh! Flobots are on Carson Daly tonight… record that or watch it live. I’m planning on driving to Cincinnati on June 2 to meet them in person and talk about some awesome things that can change the world– can’t wait.  Their album officially drops in stores tomorrow– BUY IT! Listen to it a 1000 times. I have.

COMICPRESS 2.5 and more! - Comicpress is an awesome wordpress theme created by Tyler Martin for publishing webcomics that just got awesomer with the release of 2.5– now there are more layouts, more features, etc. And there’s a cool plugin that goes along with it called Comicpress Manager which makes launching your own webcomic 10 times easier. Maybe 100 times? — Seriously, I was mucking with this last night on another TOP SECRET site and it made me want to launch like 5 comics. It also makes it easy for you to take bulk archives and upload them to wordpress— great for moving those big archives around!

BOOM BLOX - is an addicting game for the Wii. I bought it actually for my wife and I to compete and play, but the whole family loves it, fights over it… and for some reason, time really goes by fast when you’re on it. 2 hours melt away.  Which isn’t so good when you have work to do.

I’m still selling Hero By Night rings– if you want one for your collection, you’d probably better buy one this week or next because if I don’t get enough orders for the batch, I don’t think I’ll be making extras or a second run. So this is extremely limited. See here for details.