Radiant Comics

I’ve been thinking about comic books again. Specifically about Marvel and DC comic books and why I don’t read them. I go to my local comic shop every week and buy new comics but I never buy Marvel and DC comics anymore. My tastes have always run towards indie comics but I used to check in with some Marvel and DC comics every so often. Sometime around the year 2012 I stopped checking in.

The general reason I give for not liking Marvel and DC comics is their reliance on knock off characters. There is not one Spider-Man anymore. There are a dozen. Same with Batman, Wolverine, Superman, Hulk, and every other popular super hero out there. I find this tedious rather than entertaining.

There is a terrific video that shows Steve Jobs (https://youtu.be/P4VBqTViEx4) talking about leadership and what happens when marketing people start having more influence on a company than creative people. I think that’s what has happened at Marvel and DC.

It’s easy to sell stuff that’s related to something that’s already popular compared to having to create something and then make it popular. If you want to sell backpacks to little girls then put something popular with little girls on the backpack. A Wonder Woman backpack is easier to sell than a blank backpack. This effects how comics get made.

Spider-Man is popular. Put him on a backpack and a lot of little boys will buy it. But what about little girls? They might like Spider-Man or they might not. But if there was a Spider-Girl that would increase the chances of being able to sell that backpack to little girls. The freelancers who actually create the comics aren’t stupid (nor are their editors). They know that creating a Spider-Girl character will get them in good with the people who run the place. Mostly those people come from areas of the mother company that sells backpacks and such. Not comic books.

Then there is the basic way that popularity works. The easiest way to make something popular is to associate it with something that is already popular. Hence if one Spider-Man is good than two Spider-Men is even better. In the 1970s that used to apply, at least at Marvel, to the number of titles that Spider-Man starred in. But over at DC, which was a more mature company, their main heroes already had “Families.” There was Superman, Supergirl, Superboy, Superhorse, Superdog, and even more Super Family members.

Part of the reason for this “Super Family” thinking was legal. DC may as well make a Supergirl and get the copyright and trademark on it before someone else does. The other part of it was, of course, financial. Being that a character is popular a customer is more likely to buy a comic relating to that character than a new comic with no ties to anything popular.

That thinking has lead to a lot of different Wolverines, Hulks, and Spider-People. It’s hard to argue with the logic from a short term financial perspective for all involved but I don’t think it leads anywhere good in the long run. It’s kept me away from Marvel and DC comics for sure and I bet I’m not alone.

I think the problem lies in creativity. It’s tough to keep coming up with new Spider-Man stories. First they have to adhere to what the customer thinks a Spider-man story is, after all that’s what he’s here for, but they also have to be fresh and interesting. I think having a dozen different Spider-People makes that even harder. Spider-Man can get staler even faster when there are nine copies of him.

Having all those different versions of a character ruins my being interested in the character’s fate. I realized that while reading a Fantastic Four comic that involved the”Legion of Reed Richards.” He’s Mr. Fantastic from the Fantastic Four and in this story he teamed up with versions of himself from across the multiverse. There were essentially an endless supply of Reed Richards. When one died there was always another to take his place. That made me not care about his fate. The same with everyone else. Wolverine died. I didn’t care. He was just replaced with four other Wolverines.

I also think there is a long term math problem with these knock off characters. Short term it’s all fine. If your choice is between a new character and a knock off character then the knock off will make you more money right now. The problem is down the line. Knock off characters never reach the popularity of the character they copy. Batman junior will never be as popular as Batman. Think about that for the future of a company.

A lot of people point out that there haven’t been any popular characters created at Marvel and DC for decades. Off the top of my head I can think of Deadpool in the 1990s and maybe Harley Quinn also of the 1990s. I’m not even really sure how popular Harley Quinn is but at least she’s been in two movies.

My thesis is that one of the reasons there have been so few break out characters has been the focus on knock off characters. The freelance creators know what the bosses want and give them that. So if they want knock off characters to sell more backpacks that’s what gets created. Meanwhile any new character gets put on the back burner.

It’s really hard for even the big publishers, Marvel and DC, to make a character popular. That’s the nature of creativity. Any given character that is created has probably a 2% chance of ever reaching the level of Wolverine. Maybe less since I just made up that number. So in order to create the next Wolverine a publisher has to shepherd the creation of a hundred characters.

The problem is that a knock off character has a zero percent chance of being as popular as Wolverine. So every knock off character that is created doesn’t get Marvel or DC closer to the hundred characters they need to create to find the next Wolverine. And knock offs are mostly what they’re creating because of the short term financial rewards.

To make the problem even harder to deal with is that the knock offs have a better chance or reaching 50% of Wolverine’s popularity than a new character does. So do you create a character that has a better chance of reaching that 50% ceiling or one that has a shot at 100% popularity but will in all reality probably top out at 20%? It’s tough to argue for the 20% character but arguing for it is what leadership is.

In my opinion history has shown us that Marvel and DC had better start shooting for that 100% popularity. Not only have they lost a lot of fans, like me, who don’t like all the knock offs but their knock offs have reached the point of diminishing returns. They’re created just about all the knock offs that they can. It’s time to take more chances on new characters or they might run out of chances all together.

Art Writing “Looking and Contemplating”

Once again here I am sitting and contemplating my work that’s on my easel. I do that sometimes. I have three work stations in my studio. In the center and facing out the window is my drawing table. It’s working surface is 42×36 inches plus I have extensions built on either side of it that hold lots of drawing supplies. They hold mostly pens, pencils, and markers. The drawing table also has two lamps attached to it. A combo fluorescent and incandescent lamp and a fluorescent magnifying lamp. It’s a nice table. It’s also at standing height. I like to stand and work.

To the left of the drawing table and facing a wall is my computer. That is also at standing height so it sits on a large platform that I built on top of a counter. It’s a Mac Tower that’s twelve years old now (it’s from 2008) but it’s still going. I use it every day. It has a brand new 27 inch monitor attached to it as well as a really old 12×12 inch Wacom tablet. I think the tablet is older than the computer. The computer also has seven hard drives, three scanners, a trio of Harmon Kardon speakers, and a VCR hooked up to it. I can get stuff done with it.

To the right of my drawing table is my easel. When I graduated from college at Christmas time in 1988 I had no easel nor any money to buy one. So I decided to build one. Luckily I had some scrap wood lying around. Old 1x4s that were left over from some project. I cobbled together an easel out of them. I am still working on that easel in 2020. It’s not the most well crafted easel. It gets the job done but I’m no wood worker so it’s functional but not pretty.

It’s also not quite one hundred percent the same easel. When I originally built it there was a problem. The two main 1x4s were slightly warped. Whenever I put a canvas on them it never stayed flat. The upper right corner of the canvas was not flush against the easel. As I pressed against that top corner with a brush and paint the canvas would move, I always meant to fix it but instead put up with it for a decade. I’m not sure when but I think it was in the early 2000s that I finally replaced those two pieces of wood with straight pieces. That’s why it’s not quite the same easel I built in 1988 (maybe it was 1989).

So here I sit today in the easy chair that’s across the room from my drawing table. As I look to my right I can see the work I’ve done recently that’s piled up on my easel. I pile stuff up there when I’m not actively doing work on the easel. It’s good for looking at what I’ve done.

In the back of all the other stuff if a big ink drawing. I can just see the eyes of one of my faces. It’s a 22×30 inch face of a woman with black designs all over her face (and in the background) and horns on her head. I know that behind that drawing is about twelve other big ink drawings. Those are all the ones I’ve done this year.

When I’m working on a big ink drawing the easel is clear except for the one I’m working one. The rest aren’t put away though. I still have to scan then all in so I leave them out. But they’re so big I have no place for them in my studio. So each morning I take my stack of big ink drawings and put them on my bed. Then I put them back at night before I go to bed. I pick up the stack of drawings and put it on my easel in front of the one I’m currently working on. That’s the migration pattern of my big ink drawings. Except when I’m not working on one. Then the stack sits on my easel as it does now.

In front of the big ink drawings and on the left of the easel are a stack of my 11×17 inch “Dreams of Things” covers. The front one is in color and I think the rest of the ones in this stack are too. This is where I put them so I can look at them to see if they are done or not. When they are done they’ll just stay there for a while. I have to watch out for these ones because if a window is open they can get caught in a breeze and blow off the easel. That always drives me crazy. Sometimes I have to take them down and put them some where else. Art being flown across the room is not a fun distraction.

Next to that piece and behind some smaller stuff is one of my “Dreams of Things” covers still in black and white. That must have been the last one I finished because usually I move the black and white ones into my “To be finished” box. This is the box I keep unfinished eleven by seventeen inch drawing in. I go to it when I’m looking for something to work on. I guess I just wanted this one to be out for viewing.

In front of that one is a stack of my “Faces on Comics” drawings. Those are the ones I draw a face in white pastel and black ink on a page torn from an old comic book. I used to draw “Monsters on Comics” this same way but recently I haven’t wanted to draw monster faces. I’ve wanted to draw regular weird faces. I think there is about half a dozen of them there.

Finally, right next to the faces, there is a stack of 6×9 inch ink drawings. These are the ones I’ve been doing a lot of this summer. I take one of my thumbnail sketches from my inkbook, blow it up, print it out in blue line on 6×9 inch paper, and draw right over it in ink. I’ve been using ink and brush, ink and pen, and markers to make these. I’ve made over one hundred of them this summer but there are only a stack of about six on the easel right now.

So here I am contemplating all those pieces on my easel and trying to figure out what it all means. I have no answer. The meaning of things eludes me. Some mornings it’s all about the contemplating.

I finally got a new computer monitor this week. It’s a Dell 27 inch 1920×1080 monitor and it replaces my decade old Dell 27 inch 1920×1080 monitor. I didn’t go for any of the newer higher resolution monitors because I’m still running a 2008 Mac tower. Yes, the computer I work on every day is 12 years old but it still gets the job done.

I bought the old monitor back in 2009 and if I remember correctly it cost around $600. It was a top of the line graphics monitor with lots of bells and whistles. It had three different video connectors, a built in SD card reader, and a USB hub in it. It was a really good monitor for about four years. Then it got a line in it.

When most monitors get a line through them it means very bad things. It means the monitor is going to fail soon. I checked around on the Dell message boards and found out that the line was actually a flaw in this particular model. It developed in a lot of them. Dell was mum about it and there was nothing to be done. But at least the monitor wasn’t going to fail.

I worked with that single red line running from top to bottom of the right side of the monitor for a few years. Then other lines developed. By earlier this year I had about five yellow lines on the left side and five more on the right side. Plus a couple of red and blue ones. They took up about an eighth of an inch total screen space on either side. I ignored them the best I could but often would have to move things out of that area so that I could work on them. It was getting too annoying.

So earlier this year I started looking on line for new monitors. I knew I wasn’t going to spend $600 on a top of the line Dell graphics monitor again. Besides the fact that my computer’s video card probably couldn’t take advantage of that higher resolution I just plain didn’t want to be let down again.

Surprisingly there were a lot of 27 inch 1920×1080 monitors out there for about $200. What was top of the line eleven years ago is now the bottom. I was looking at all different brands. I kept finding this one and that one and putting them on my Amazon wish list. Surprisingly a lot of them were quickly sold out after just a week or two of being on my list. Or the price would jump by $100 and then it would disappear. I think there were a lot of people buying monitors because of Covid-19.

I must have settled on six different monitors over a six month period only to have them not be available because I wasn’t ready to buy. It was really weird. One model would disappear so Amazon would suggest another only to have that one disappear in a week too.

I was also looking at small monitors because I needed a second monitor to go with my laptop when I teach Zoom classes. I actually had a small TV that I wanted to use for that purpose but it wouldn’t work. I hooked it up via a VGA to Lightning connector but the TV wouldn’t see the connection even though it had a “PC” button in its menu and it was built for just this function. Failure.

Then as I was looking at small monitors that had HDMI connectors I decided to buy a HDMI to Lightning connector adapter in advance of getting the actual monitor. After that was sitting around the house for a week I tried it out on the TV and it worked fine. Then I had no need for a new small monitor. Money saved.

That put me in the clear to look at bigger monitors again. This time it was a Dell monitor for about $250 that caught my eye. It didn’t have the SD card reader like my old one, and I’d miss that, but none of the newer monitors had that anyway so it was no big deal. I ended up putting that one on my wish list and my sister bought it for me as a birthday gift.

I thought I’d have an easy time setting up the monitor. It was only a power cord, a USB hub plug, and a VGA connector. I figured I’d be able to unplug the old VGA connector and plug it right into the new monitor. Turns out my old setup had an older type of VGA connector. Then I checked my pile of wires and saw I had the right wire to plug into the tower plus the right adapter to plug the other end into the monitor. I was good to go. Then it didn’t work.

Turns out that was the same wire and adapter setup that didn’t work with the small TV. I wonder if the adaptor is bad? Either way I decided to grab the HDMI wire and adapter from the small TV setup and lo and behold they got my new monitor working.

Plugging, unplugging, and running all those wires took more time than I wanted it to but I was happy to get things working. Of course then I had to order a new HDMI cable and adaptor for the small TV setup.

The weird thing about the new 27 inch monitor is how much smaller it is than the old 27 inch monitor. The screen size is actually the same width but about an inch shorter in height. That make it slightly smaller in usable space but the space around the monitor is smaller too. There was about an inch and half of plastic on all four side of the old monitor. The new one has about a quarter inch on three sides and a half an inch on the botton. That make it visually a lot smaller.

One odd thing I ran into just today was with my SD card reader. I always used the built in one on the old monitor but I have a separate one that I used before I got that monitor. I hooked it up to the USB hub on the new monitor but it wouldn’t read my SD card. A light came on indicating there was power to the card reader but nothing showed up on the desktop. No card. I plugged a second card reader right into the front of my computer and that one wouldn’t read my card either. I have no idea what’s going on with that but the SD card reader on my old 2012 MacBook Pro still worked. I figure it out another day.

“Monsters on Comics” has been one of the names of a series of drawings that I’ve made. I take an old comic book, tear out the pages, and use charcoal, a black marker, white conte crayon, and a white pastel to draw the face of a monster on that torn out page. I felt like doing some more drawings on comic pages but not monsters for some reason.

I draw faces all the time. They’re one of my favorite things to draw. I like drawing weird facers with strange features. I’m always looking for new ways to draw eyes, mouths, and hair. For some reason the noses I draw aren’t as weird. There is not much I can do with a nose. Though I have a few different ways to draw them they’re all kind of the same. I find them less expressive than eyes or mouths.

I’ve drawn a couple of my weird faces on comic book pages but not many. I’m not sure why but I’ve almost always stuck to monsters on those comic book pages. Maybe it’s because charcoal, ink, and rough paper lend themselves more to scary drawings. Why swim against the tide?

When I’m making a monster face drawing it’s fairly easy to start. I use a black marker or piece of charcoal to start sketching out the face. I’m not worried too much about making a mistake because I’ll be going over the sketchy black lines with white pastel. I work back and forth between black and white building up layers as I go. There is no erasing but I can black or white something out. At least little somethings.

That isn’t how I normally draw my face drawings so the first thing I had to do on these comic book pages was to figure out how to draw a face on that paper. This is old yellowed comic book paper from the 1970s and it’s delicate. It can’t take a lot of drawing work on it and even handling it I can feel how fragile it is.

For the first drawing I decided to be as spontaneous as I am with the monster faces. It turned out that was pretty hard to do. I immediately ran into problems fitting the hair on the page and the face was coming out pretty generic. I managed to add some interest to the face with spirals and little tick marks but it was tough to get into. In the end I liked the way it came out but not the process.

For the second face I decided to be more deliberate with the drawing. I sketched it out the best I could with both a white and black charcoal pencil. I was easier than the first one but it took a lot more time to draw. I still wasn’t happy with the process.

With the third face I decided I may as well dig into my backlog of face drawings. I checked my digital files for a series of faces that I drew back in 2006. Why was I trying to reinvent the wheel? I could just pick a face that I already drew and draw it on a comic book page. But how should I transfer the face over?

Normally I transfer a drawing one of two ways. I run the paper through my printer and print a copy right on the paper or I use graphite paper to transfer a drawing. I have both white and black graphite transfer paper so I decided to try them. Both were failures in this case. Neither black nor white showed up well enough on the a page that was already full of ink.

I then tried to run a sheet of the comic book paper trough my printer. I knew the paper was too old old and delicate by itself to run trough so I taped a piece of it to a sheet of plain inkjet paper. I tried to print on it but the paper got caught in the printer. It crumpled it all up. That was a no go.

The next method was the old fashioned way. I just put the old face drawing next to me and looked at it as I worked on the comic book paper. After all I wasn’t making an exact copy of it. I just needed it as a guide so I wasn’t inventing everything about the face as I was drawing on delicate paper. This worked out pretty well.

I’ve decided to stick with this method. I think I’m going to dig into my “Drifting and Dreaming” comic stip and mind some faces from it. I’ve been making that strip for years now and have binders full of art cards. This are baseball card size drawings of the talking heads I use for that strip. I’ve got well over a thousand faces drawn for that strip so there is no need to kill myself trying to create new faces on delicate paper.

That brings me to another subject. Paper. I’m a bit of a paper snob. At least I like to draw on nice paper. It makes drawing so much easier. Drawing on a comic book is kind of a gimmick, and I’m okay with that, but it makes it harder to draw. I almost always draw on Bristol board rather than even a basic drawing paper. Bristol holds up better. I even us it for sketches. That how much I like a good paper. It amazes me that not every artist is like that.

I have some friends who are professional artists and they do a lot of their drawing on typing or inkjet paper. It’s almost all preliminary stuff but even then I don’t know how they draw on such bad drawing paper. But they like its thinness because it’s easy to light-box and its disposability because they don’t have to be so precious about the drawing. I find that paper to cheap and I don’t like the surface of it but to each his own. That’s why we’re all always searching for solutions.