writes nerdy things, celebrates those things as an English teacher, and is the co-founder of the production house ADK MOGUL. He lives in the mountains. Thanks for reading; feel free to leave a message, and please don't ask if he's D(e)Press(e)d.
The second addendum I was thinking about this morning to the whole Saga vs Apple thing is exactly what Brothers says above and I alluded to, but did not go far enough: who is handling the standards and practices at ComiXology? To me, this thing sounds like a rookie mistake—it may be a simple misunderstanding on the part of a new hire. That’s probably too simplistic.
None of it matters—the fact remains this kind of thing only happened because of ComiXology’s practices. I’m not bagging to pile on, because I rely on this service to get SAGA and other independent books I don’t have access to anymore. I agree with Brothers that ComiXology is the new Diamond, and I think Waid gets to some truth of the matter as well. Now I’m fairly worried about my interaction with the company.
For the last few months, a talented university teacher named Christy Blanch has been putting together a college-level course called “Gender Through Comic Books”–but it’s not limited to college students. It’s the world’s first comics-related Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)–meaning that it will be FREELY AVAILABLE to ANYONE across the world who has web access and who’s interested in comics and in the creative process. There’s no obligation, NO COST, and all you have to do is take thirty seconds to enroll at the following site:
As I’ve started teaching in the last year, I’ve been working out how I can bring comics into the classroom. It’s been a project of mine since last Spring, but I think I’ve finally got something solid. More soon.
The thing that I love about Waid is he never fails to get me fired up and trying to stay consistent with my mood and excitement with comics. He’s literally the root of the reason I got into comics and…yeah. Read this and get infected.
Because the myth among us comic book folk is that webcomics guys, ah, yeah there’s a couple of them making a little bit of money, but by and large they’re all losing their shirts. You know: little kids doing their little thing on the side, that’s the myth. And the reality of it is, no, actually a lot of guys are making a decent living doing this, a lot of guys. And it doesn’t mean everybody can, but it means that there’s a lot more to that, there’s a lot more money in that ecosphere than you dreamed, and some guys are making really good money doing that stuff. And while making really good money is for me not the goal, it’s just to make enough money to keep doing it, the idea that it can be done is great. And what’s also great about the webcomic community is that I have yet to encounter any sense of selfishness, any sense of proprietary ownership, any sense of trade secrets and people being very hush hush with what they’re doing, because that’s stupid. Comic books tend to do that because we’re selling to an audience of 90,000 people, but among the webcomics guys they seem to get the fact that the potential audience is 6 billion people. There’s room for all of us out there. We’re not worried about competition yet among each other.
An idea is not a series, and jokes are not characters […] A story is only a story if (a) it’s about someone (singular or plural) who wants something and (b) something’s in hi (or their) way. And it’s a story worth telling only if (c) the reader has reasons to care about (a) and (b).
Mark Waid, on the creation of INSUFFERABLE (and also giving some print-this-out-and-hang-it-on-the-wall-where-you-work advice for writers.)
There’s enough tension between Carol and Bart to warrant them eventually hooking up, but what makes this young teenage crush work is it has no problem going from friendly ribbing, to crass teen locker-talk, to tender moments, wrapping up in the completely believable hilarity that these two good friends find in the moment we’ve all been expecting. It shows adorable maturity and a certain kind of one-ups-manship in the sense that even though people have been expecting this, including characters in the comic, the two people involved in this conflict think it’s totally ridiculous. (From IMPULSE #20, Oct. 1996)
The relationship between Bart and baseball is something confortably entertaining and occurred right around the time that I was growing into loving baseball. (From IMPULSE #20, Oct. 1996. Oddly enough comixology says this issue was written by Tom Peyer, but it was Mark Waid.)
