By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 12/9/2015
Folks, I really don’t know what to say. Marvel’s Secret Wars is running late (but has a new issue out this week!). This means the publisher has been launching titles that have revealed the post-Secret Wars status quo while the event is happening. Good or bad, that’s for the reader to decide. We’re just here to help […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 10/11/2015
Marvel decided to round out their New York Comic-Con with a Women of Marvel panel where the publisher announced a two-issue crossover with Howard the Duck and Squirrel Girl, two rising humor titles defying the normal in the All-New, All-Different Marvel line. The cover debuting this afternoon depicts Howard the Duck in Squirrel Girl cosplay […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 4/20/2015
Swedish randos (aka Dongery) from SPX 2005
§ There’s been some chatter over the last week or so over this public FB thread by Stephen Bissette about what he sees as exclusion of certain creators at indie comics shows. It sprang out of an older thread, and the conversation eventually includes Bill Kartalopoulos, who works with SPX and MoCCA, as well as Zack Soto of the just concluded Lineworks NW, Tom Spurgeon of the upcoming CXC show, and a lot of exhibitors past and present. The main complaint, it seems, is that there isn’t enough room at shows like SPX (the one which hurt the most feelings) and TCAF and Lineworks NW and so on and this leads to exclusion. Or as one Carl Antonowicz puts it:
If one’s work doesn’t meet the unstated aesthetic of the committee, one is out of luck.
Which is…yeah. If you’re gonna spend the money to put on an indie comics show—an undertaking so bereft of big profits that many of them are crowdfunded—you do get to choose what kind of comics you want to showcase there, and it turns out that people dedicated enough to actuallly put on a show generally have a pretty clear idea of what kind of comics they want to promote.
There are some sad stories in the comments—veteran cartoonist turned educator Don Simpson can’t get into the local indy show in his native Pittsburgh, and 90s mainstay David Chelsea was denied a table at Linework but gets a free table at the local Wizard show. And other people can’t get in and so on and so forth.
I have my own comment there, but if you read this site at all you can probably guess what I say: there are a zillion small shows out there and more coming. If you can’t find a local place to get set up and show your wares, you must live in a very remote spot. And yes, tables are expensive at some of these shows (but see next couple of items), but guess what: NO ONE PROMISED YOU’D BE ABLE TO MAKE MONEY AT THIS THING. There are more good cartoonists than ever and old-timers do have to compete against the new kids, who often have strong support networks via social media and colleagues from art school. And even if you build it, they may very well not come because you could be set up between Todd McFarlane and Kate Beaton.
Is this a competition? Sort of. While comics people are generally inclusive to a fault, the moment you put your first line on paper/screen you started competing for attention and acclaim (which come in unlimited amounts) and for money and space (which come in more limited amounts.)
One aspect of CAFs/indie shows that gets thrown around a bit in the thread is how they have become an alternative distribution system. It’s true a lot of publishers rely on CAFs to make a lot of their profits. This is far from healthy, but we’re still talking work that is of a niche appeal, and we have an indie comics reading audience that really likes buying their comics at shows where they can get a signed edition, have a personal transaction and maybe even buy some other stuff they didn’t know about that is normally warehoused in a shoebox under the creator’s sofa.
So while I understand the frustration of people who can’t get in to certain very popular events, there are lots of other ways to get out there. And all of this is going to change more. A column by the late great Dylan Williams from 2011 where he’s rethinking his convention strategy shows now much the landscape has changed in a more four years..and in four years it will have changed some more.
I think another underlying aspect of this is the youth movement in comics, and older creators feeling very much left out of the picture. But that deserves a post all its own.
§ Meanwhile, Bissette himself was a guest of the Big Wow Con in San Jose and reunited with the old Swamp Thing crew of Rick Veitch, Tom Yeates and John Totleben.
Posted by Stephen Bissette on Sunday, April 19, 2015
§ AAANNNNNNNDDDDD speaking of CAF/con economies, Barry and Leon, the Secret Acres boys, have posted their MoCCA Fest 2015 report and confront the money things head on. You’ll notice that MoCCA isn’t on the “dream list” for comics folks because tables are very expensive:
We’ve talked a bit about the con economy on this blog before. But let’s go there again. MoCCA has the highest table cost of any show we attend at $460 per table. That’s a whole $110 above SPX and a whopping $64.50 above TCAF. TCAF costs attendees nothing. MoCCA is five bucks. SPX is three times that, asking a whole fifteen dollar bill of everyone coming through the door. They look alike from here. Or do they? Tony Breed, a Chicago guy and our RIPE neighbor of a couple weeks ago, came by and said the most interesting thing: his sales at CAKE were slow, but he makes more money at that show than at any other. This year, we brought home something less than half of our take from MoCCA 2014. We made money. We can’t not make money. We live here.
Our most expensive show, by far, is TCAF. Believe us, if we could afford to skip customs and ship our books to Canada, we sure as shit would. Depending on the exchange rate, food and shelter and gas, we need to clean up every year or we go broke. We’re pretty sure Annie Koyama is making more money at TCAF than she could at any other show and, at any other show, break-even has got to be way up there for Koyama Press. We’ve enjoyed a couple of years of making more money at TCAF than we have at MoCCA, but we took home less money every time. And we’re a publishing company, micro or no. If you’re an artist making mini-comics, you’re not making table at MoCCA without a gang to split costs – and profits – and if you can’t make it there, you’re not making it anywhere else, either. How much are you saving traveling to Toronto or booking a room at the SPX Marriott? If not for the money, why bother with shows at all? Do we really need to answer that question?
§ Speaking of Secret Acres, they’ve joined the gang of small presses (Koyama, Uncivilized, Alternative, Nobrow, Enchanted Lion Arsenal Pulp, etc) that are being distributed by Consortium. Consortium seems to do good things for small comics publishers so good for them.
§ And speaking of Linework NW, it sounds like it went well:
And it’s a good one at that. In its first year, last year, Linework packed 3,000 people into the Norse Hall in northeast Portland. This year they expanded the festival to two days in an effort to thin the crowds, but if Saturday was any indication the event is only getting bigger. “I love it,” Portland artist John Black said at his booth. “It’s more of an illustrator’s (event), you know what I mean? It’s for people who make stuff.”
HASHTAG BLESSED pic.twitter.com/SwMlXZvX17
— Melanie Gillman (@melgillman) April 19, 2015
§ BUT over in Binghamton, NY, everything was coming up Milhouse for the local comic con:
More than one thousand people attended the River Road Comic Expo Sunday at Tioga Downs. The event was free and open to the public, and featured industry artists as well as local independent artists. “It’s great to have a place to come and be able to get a little face-to-face time and shake hands with the guys who make your day,” said illustrator Mike Capprotti. There were also vendors selling both new and old books and related products. “One of the great things about the pop culture community is that everyone’s really enthusiastic,” said expo organizer Jared Aiosa.
§ George Lucas has felt a tingling in the force and thinks Marvel might reboot Howard the Duck for the screen!!!
During the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival, Lucas commented on negative movie reviews, noting how even the worst reviewed films can “float up to the surface of the lake, and then they become cult classics. … It means you made an interesting movie or a weird movie, and a small group of people love it.” He continued by saying, “Even Howard the Duck is a cult classic. I have a feeling that Marvel’s gonna redo it because of the technology they have today.”
§ In less frightening news, John Ridley, showrunner of American Drime and OSar winner for 12 Years a Slave, may be working on a show for Marvel/ABC reinventing an existing Marvel superhero character or property.” Vague as hell so it could be anything, even Howard the Duck.
§ Reminder, Bart Beaty and co. are analyzing the hell ouf of comics over at What Were Comics? including Fun Home and more.
§ I forgot to link to this cool of page of interviews from the pages of Frontier Hellen Jo, Sascha Hommer, Ping Zhu and Sam Alden.
§ Here’s an old link I had to an investigation of a crappy scraper site.
§ And an interview with Keith Knight who has seen it all and then made a funny comic strip about it. .
§ Juliet Kahn offers a list of The Best Anime And Manga For Beginners and i think it’s pretty solid, but she left out …..(enter a list of 1000 names)
§ Finally, Zainab Akhtar reviews Jillian Tamaki’s SexCoven, the small press book of the year thus far.
By: Andy Yates,
on 4/10/2015
A couple years ago, Chris Samnee was in the unenviable position of having to replace artists Paolo Rivera & Marcos Martin on Marvel’s Daredevil, as regular series artist. Now, 40, or so issues later, that memorable run on Daredevil(which is still going) will now be remembered by most folks as the “classic Samnee/Waid Daredevil run” thanks to Samnee stepping up to the plate artistically! Chris’ stunning visuals match Waid’s character driven scripts perfectly! Studying the great comics artists he grew up with in the 1980’s, and working hard at his craft since he was kid(he got his first professional comics credit when he was 15!), Samnee has become one of the most respected artists working in comics, today.
Chris Samnee won an Eisner Award for Best Penciller/Inker for his work on the The Rocketeer: Cargo of Doom, and a Harvey Award for Most Promising Newcomer for 2011’s Capote in Kansas, published by ONI Press.
You can follow the steady stream of updated Chris Samnee art on his website here.
For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com - Andy Yates
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 4/7/2015
Welcome to the weekly feature MATT CHATS. I’ve been doing regular interviews for awhile now, but now they have a name! Every Tuesday I chat with someone involved in the making, distributing, marketing, selling, etc. of comic books. For this inaugural edition, I spoke with cartoonist Rob Guillory.
Six years into a run pencilling, inking and coloring the almost-monthly Image series CHEW, Rob Guillory has started to illustrate interior pages for other titles. Most recently Guillory added his artistic flair to a story written by CM Punk in the Thor annual and a backup story in Howard the Duck written by Chip Zdarsky. I spoke with Rob about the toll of a 60-issue epic, collaborating with writers other than John Layman and a whole lot more.
Not really antsy, so much as just excited at the prospect of starting something totally new. It’s also a bit scary. CHEW‘s been my backyard for a long time now, so jumping into a new world with new characters is challenging and pretty thrilling.
I doubt it. For a few different reasons. First off, 60 issues is a massive commitment, obviously. So I can’t really grasp committing another 6-8 years of my life to one series at this point. That may change, but that’s where I’m at right now.
Plus CHEW was in the rare position of having the sales to sustain such an extended run. It’s very, VERY rare for a book created by two virtual unknowns to have a loyal monthly fanbase big enough to warrant 60 issues, and that’s been a major blessing. These days, books typically debut with high numbers and major press attention, then peter down quickly and quietly. That never really happened with us. Our monthly numbers over 6 years have been very steady, and our TPB and digital sales continue to grow. Could we have the same luck with another 60 issue series? Who knows, but it doesn’t happen much for creators that aren’t at Kirkman or BKV levels of name recognition. Time will tell, but I sort of lean toward doing 20 issue stories in the future.
Not anxious at all, really. It’s not really something I think too much about. There’s still 15 issues of CHEW left, so I’m just focusing on making those better than the 40-something issues that came before. We’ve had a strong run, and we need to end it in a way to honors what we’ve built. The last page will be here soon enough, though.
We were mutual fans of each other’s work. I’m a big wrestling fan, and CHEW is one of Punk’s favorite books. At some point, we crossed paths and hit it off. I never expected that friendship to eventually lead to me working with him at Marvel, but life is weird that way.
Punk worked Marvel Method, with a lot of general scene description, but no panel-by-panel work. So I got to handle all the pacing and layout for the issue, which is very different than my CHEW work, but it worked well on this story. Punk’s really good with words, so his script was very conversational and super-articulate, and I got what he was going for right from the beginning. And he was smart enough to play to my strengths with a ton of physical comedy and character acting. He did good.
Well, at this point, after 40-something issues of drawing John Layman’s scripts, drawing anyone else’s is always a little weird. But Chip’s script was great. Brimming over with absurd, silly detail that was right up my alley. Plus, using Luke Cage and Iron Fist was a personal request of mine, so that was fantastic.
Yeah. With Thor, there are a few little background gags in the tavern where it takes place. Nothing crazy, just a few subtle Easter Eggs. My personal fave is getting to change Mjolnir’s inscription to “DO YOU EVEN LIFT, BRO?”, which I’m not even sure the Marvel guys caught. Plus, I came up with all the Marvel-themed drinks that Thor and Mephisto are chugging. Sorta my love letter to various Marvel characters.
And with my Howard story, which takes place in a court setting, Cage and Iron Fist’s lawyer is basically Ben Matlock, and Howard’s is a skeevier Saul Goodman. These are all little details that very few people would catch, but they’re there, and it’s always super-rewarding to see readers catch them.
Well, finding dependable creative partners was nearly impossible when I was a young, aspiring artist. So early on, I just decided to do it all myself. I never thought it would turn into a creative advantage, but it really has. Nowadays, I have a color assistant, Taylor Wells, that handles my flatting and cleans up my rough shadow work. But I still handle the bulk of my coloring work, and I love it.
It’s a give and take. On one hand, I love the creative control. On the other, I love the idea of taking the week that I usually dedicate to coloring and napping instead, because it IS an intense work schedule. I can see myself hand-picking a colorist for a future project, just to see how it feels. We’ll see.
Yes. I wrote a lot of my own pre-CHEW work, and I’m already in the rough stages of writing my own post-CHEW work.
Not yet. Layman and I have toyed with the idea of doing something else, and I’m sure we will eventually. I expect to pitch Marvel a mini-series at some point in the next year. After that, I’m expecting to do another creator-owned series. Again, we’ll see. Part of me wants to take a little time off after CHEW ends, but I’m a workhorse, so that may not happen. I may jump right into new work the day after I draw the last page of CHEW. Who knows.
Aside from earning a living, this is just something I’ve always done. I was beating myself up for a self-imposed deadline for a mini-comic that only I would see when I was age 9. I’m built for comics. It’s a love-hate relationship sometimes when the deadlines get hard or some comic outrage blows up on Twitter, but I’ve been on a path to make comics from the very beginning. I just love it.
You can follow Rob Guillory on Twitter @Rob_guillory and buy original art and more at his online store. I encourage you do both.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 3/11/2015
[The most unlikely comeback of 2014 may just have been Howard the Duck’s cameo at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy. A cult character who first appeared in a 1973 issue of Man Thing, he went on to become one of Steve Gerber’s most memorable creations, fricasséeing the Marvel Universe and contemporary culture. A 1986 film produced by George Lucas became a legendary bomb however, and a successful lawsuit by Disney over copyright infringement led to Howard permanently donning pants and getting a facial makeover. (Howard was also the center of various ownership battles over the years between Gerber and Marvel.) Since then he’s popped up here and there in the Marvel U, sort of a migrating duck of offbeat humor. After his surprise Guardians appearance, and given the more wide ranging of Marvel’s universe both on pwper and on the screen, a new ongoing series seemed right. And Marvel found just the man for the job. Torontonian humorist Chip Zdarsky, the pen name of Steve Murray, is a local legend for various stunts including running for mayor, befriending Applebee’s making hilarious infographics for the National Post. But it’s as collaborator with writer Matt Fraction on Sex Criminals, Time’s 2013 Comic of the Year, and one of Image’s best selling books, that he’s become a true social media phenom. With his finely honed, self-deprecating humor and discerning eye for a social trope, Zdarsky seems the perfect person to give the oft-misunderstood mallard another go round.
Howard the Duck #1, drawn by Joe Quinones and colored by Rico Renzi, is on sale today.]
MacDonald: So, Howard the Duck. Were you a fan, were you daunted? What was your first thought when, I assume, some Marvel editor called you up and said “Chip do you want to write Howard the Duck?”
Zdarsky: It happened quickly yet slowly. I started doing cover work for Marvel after Sex Criminals started doing well. I’ve been dealing with exclusively with Wil [Moss, editor of the project] and I did a 2 page story for him for Original Sins, a gag strip. He emailed me and said “Hey I have a feeling Howard is on the up and up, do you have any ideas for a Howard series?” and so I pitched my ideas and he liked them and we talked about it and batted around these artists and then got Joe [Quinones]. And during the whole process I didn’t even I think I had the job because I hate myself and I don’t believe anything good can happen [laughter]. I even did covers and wrote a script and I didn’t even think I had the job. I think mostly because I heard stories mostly, DC things where people were going all out on projects and then finding out somebody is doing the same project.
MacDonald: That guy in the building across the way also working on this series!
Zdarsky: Yeah exactly! Until the day that they announced it…I didn’t actually let it sink in that I would be working with Howard The Duck. I was a fan as a kid…a fan of the movie—because I was a child! But then I had this weird Uncle Fred who collected Howard and old Vampirella magazines, Robert Crumb stuff. He was kind of an underground comics guy. Howard was my favorite of those and whenever I would go over, I devoured them. It was funny, two years ago when I was working on the Vampirella project, he bequeathed me his Vampirella magazines and also his Howard the Duck black and white magazines as well, which I loved. So as soon as I got email from Wil… I cycled through the old issues, the old magazine and it was amazing. I love Howard.
MacDonald: Right, well its funny because I think I tweeted about [you having the right mind set for Howard], but what you’ve said in this interview makes you the perfect writer for it! “I hate myself and I don’t believe anything good can happen.” [laughs] Do you think being a ‘pessimist about success’, is a good attitude to have for writing Howard the Duck?
Zdarsky: I think it’s a good attitude to have for writing corporate comics because it is a job that you can be fired off pretty quickly. Whenever I explain how comics work to people who are not familiar with the comics industry, they’re like, so wait you have a job? But they can like firing you at any moment? And they do routinely? Yeah, that’s how it works in comics and then you try and get another job and it lasts for a year and you get fired and have to find another job. It’s all freelance no matter what unless you’re Brian Michael Bendis I guess or Geoff Johns. So with Howard specifically you’ve got to be a bit of a pessimist I think. Steve Gerber would go on some pretty good tears in the original run. I don’t think I have necessarily quite that world view but yeah, I predict things never going well for me, so that probably helps. So I won’t be disappointed if they fire me after 4 issues, like okay that’s 4 more than I thought I’d ever do.
MacDonald: I’m old so I read the Howard comics as a kid and they blew my mind because I was the perfect age for these comics, let’s put it that way. I haven’t really tried to read them since, so I don’t know how they hold up but this bits I’ve revisited show that Gerber is a very good writer, his technique was incredible. The character started as an absurd thing but was surprisingly well rounded. The original Howard run was about was very much the post Vietnam malaise in America, Howard ran for president in a post Watergate world. I think it was pretty universal but it was also very much the time. Do you change your thinking about the character? What is it… I saw on one of the covers instead of saying ‘Trapped in a World He Never Made’, it says something different.
Zdarsky: “Trapped In a World He’s Grown Accustomed To”.
MacDonald: Right. I loved that. Is that what’s propelling that forward now, is he complacent, what are his demons now?
Zdarsky: Well, a lot of people were asking me if I was going to bring Beverly [Switzler, Howard’s girlfriend] back because she wasn’t in any of the preview stuff. I’ve removed her and kind of made that a bit of mystery because my idea is that Howard has actually been here for a while. So once you’ve accepted that you’re part of this world, you have to find your place in it. He always had a loneliness even when he was with Beverly throughout the original run, but I feel like at this point he wouldn’t necessarily have that. I removed Beverly because it recreates the loneliness aspect of it. It’s so weird to think about Howard the Duck and talk about Howard the Duck! I’m still not quite used to it. [MacDonald laughs.] I’m overseeing a duck! Even the comic themselves have changed a lot and but it was always satirizing popular culture Kung fu movies of the time or ‘Star Wars’…
MacDonald: The Blanderizer, that was one of my favorites.
Zdarsky: [Laughs] Exactly!
MacDonald: Doctor Bong, the Kidney Lady.
Zdarsky: Yeah… and so popular culture now is Marvel, they’re the dominant force. I’ve got this opportunity to have him within the Marvel universe playing around with that world in which he’s no longer the odd duck, so to speak. I put him in New York and I’ve got all these super heroes and stuff flying around. In New York he’s not so much of an anomaly anymore. People aren’t whispering or yelling “Oh my god there’s a duck who talks!” as much as they used to. That’s also why I gave him a job as a private investigator. I felt like I needed him to try and figure out what he wants to do here at least at the beginning. We want to go weird and strange places because of the Howard tradition.
MacDonald: Right, I did see a couple of preview pages that came up and I see you do have Spider-Man in here and it’s pretty heavy on the MCU stuff…
Zdarsky: Especially at the beginning. There are a couple of reasons for that, one is that I want to show him in that universe, I want to firmly plant him in there because the cases he’s going to work on are going to involve a lot of these characters. It’s also because I still have that thing where I still think I’ll be fired [MacDonald laughs] and this is my one chance to write Spider-Man’s dialogue, so I’ll totally shoe horn that into issue one. And in every issue it’s, hey, can I use this character? And Marvel has to check with different offices—they must hate me by now because I’m trying to use everyone, because it could end at any moment.
MacDonald: Is there Woodgod? That’s the one everybody is going to want to know. [General laughter]
Zdarsky: So far I haven’t put in that request. I have a feeling that if I put in that request there would be no issue.
MacDonald: I don’t know, I’m telling you, listen Wood God, man. Or maybe The Vulture, you know, a lonely old man…Anyway enough from me. Who is Howard? What kind of guy is he?
Zdarsky: Obviously by appearance, he’s the anomaly, he’s trapped in the world he never made, but he’s actually the most relatable character that Marvel has. He doesn’t have any powers or anything, he’s just like an average guy who cuts through bullshit… and especially now throwing him in with all these other Marvel characters, you can have that personality shine through by calling people on their weird shit. One of the preview pages that they put out was with Spider-Man, a nod to [the original] issue #1, just to get it started off. But its also Spider-Man, you’re a weird fetish spider and you’ve got this weird fetish cat, like go kiss some criminals! People should probably call Spider-Man on that stuff. It’s great to have Howard be that character.
MacDonald: Let’s talk about writing a little bit. This is the first comic that you’ve just written?
Zdarsky: I was writing it simultaneously with my new series for Image, Kaptara with Kagan McLeod, but otherwise, yeah its the first time I’ve written something where someone else has drawn it.
MacDonald: And also your first sustained work for the Big Two?
Zdarsky: Yeah. I did that two pager for Marvel but that’s it and it’s unbelievable. Working with Matt [Fraction] on Sex Criminals was also my first time working with a writer. I was always a little jealous of Matt having the ability to write a sentence and then I would spend like a day trying to bring a sentence to life, Working with Joe on Howard, I said it before and it sounds really cheesy but it’s like an honor, in a way, to have somebody draw your words. Whenever I get the pencils and inks and colors back I’m just wow, people are doing things because I wrote a few words. It’s a strange responsibility. I’ve never had that feeling before and I’m also apologizing in the script…
MacDonald: For making them draw things?
Zdarsky: Yeah, if I said something like a giant outer space theme park, you know there’s a note to Joe apologizing, because I know what that means because I’m doing it on Sex Criminals.
MacDonald: But you’re lucky, Joe is such an amazing artist, he’s great.
Zdarsky: He’s unbelievable. But the only downside is that when they get the pages back, they’re different from what I envisioned but they’re better and then it makes me realize I’m not that good of an artist. [MacDonald laughs] I’m like, oh wow! When I got the job doing Howard, Wil Moss asked me to do some Howard redesign sketches. I sent them to Wil and he liked them. But then he brought Joe onboard and got Joe to do the same thing. Mine just look like hot garbage compared to Joe’s, so I’m glad he’s on the book.
MacDonald: Right, he’s a very inspired choice. You have a monkey in these preview pages. Is this an all animal book?
Zdarsky: It was like one of the only notes I got from higher up at Marvel, let’s not make this the anthropomorphized book. That’s Hei Hei, She Hulk’s monkey from Charles Soule’s She Hulk run. That’s such a good book and that’s part of the fun. I’ve set this book in She Hulk’s building—Charles approved all of that and he put Howard in a cameo in the last issue of She Hulk. It adds a weird little thrill to see creators pick up on things you’re doing and kind of going back and forth. You don’t really get that with Sex Criminals aside from making fun of The Wicked and The Divine.
MacDonald: Well let’s talk a little bit about that. Are there any adjustments you have to make? You’re also doing an Image book with Kagan, are there mental adjustments you have to make for working in somebody else’s sandbox here, the Marvel Universe home of the world’s most recognized book characters?
Zdarsky: In a lot of ways its easier because the characters are defined for you, they have the voice of Howard or the voice of Spider-man. If you’ve read those comics over the years and you’re observant enough, you can kind of pick up those voices. With Sex Criminals and Kaptara, you’re generating it and so you have to maintain a consistency with something you’ve just created, which is sometimes a little tricky. The process is so different with Image. Matt and I basically work on that book together, and its just us and so when we have a friend proofread it and we upload it to Image and then they upload it to the printer the next day, they don’t see the script, they don’t see the pencils, there’s no stages for that book, its just us back and forth. With Marvel, even the two page strip I did, there are four editors cc’d on the emails and everybody is safeguarding the characters and making sure tone and characters are consistent. Which only make sense, but you always have to have that in your mind when you’re writing these things now.
MacDonald: On the other hand I guess its like you have more of a safety net in a way too, like you have more people checking to make sure you didn’t screw up.
Zdarsky: I receive pretty much uniformly fantastic notes and that’s not kissing ass at editors, there are things that slipping through the cracks at my end partly because I’m not that familiar with the continuity of the characters, partly because maybe I’m overworked, but yeah the editors have been fantastic. Wil spotting plot issues and [Marvel executive editor] Tom Brevoort is like an encyclopedia of Marvel, you know, they’re good people to have in your corner.
MacDonald: Well, we’re big fans of Wil Moss at Stately Beat Manor. I don’t want to stray too far into your Image work, perhaps that would be another interview at some point but I mean, Sex Criminals—good lord, this book has become a phenomenon, is that safe to say?
Zdarsky: Yeah… I don’t like labeling it, but it’s made convention experiences a totally new thing.
MacDonald: Chip, I think we first met 15 years ago, 14 years ago back in the Warren Ellis Forum which is scary. You’re one of a number of creators coming out of that scene so to speak, Kelly Sue [DeConnick] was there…
Zdarsky: Kieron [Gillen].
MacDonald: Matt Fraction, Jamie McKelvie, Andy Khouri, now an editor at DC, Bryan Lee O’Malley was on there, Alex DeCampi, Brian Wood…
Zdarsky: That guy, what’s his name Warren Ellis?
MacDonald: It’s just pretty insane how many people were on there. You’ve always been known as this incredibly funny guy or the guy with the great gimmick like running for mayor or something. And now you’ve put all that to use on social media to [promote your creator-owned comics.] I think you said at New York Comic Con you guys had a meet up and people couldn’t get into the bar, there were so many people standing outside…
Zdarsky: Yeah. It’s nuts. I was giving a talk to a book festival exclusively for publishers and a lot of people were asking about social media. Like, should they get their authors to all do social media and I said “NO!” You do it because you like it. If you like telling jokes and talking to people, great. But people can smell someone selling something a mile away. Authors with a Twitter account where there’s no activity and all of a sudden it’s [Author voice] “oh what a great day to sit down and “#write.” The next tweet is an Amazon link! I just have fun. There’s no point where I’m just promoting something. It’s how I had my career at the newspaper and its how the comics thing is turning out; just doing things that I want to do.
MacDonald: Did you sense a change? You have always been very active on social media but was there a change in how people interact with you after Sex Criminals became such a hit?
Zdarsky: Twitter is kind of the same because you follow the same people. People will respond to you. With the Howard thing I’m getting a lot of people saying “Hey I’m an old Howard fan, don’t fuck this up!” Everyone has their ideas of how a character should be and I know that’s going to change a lot after next week for me. Facebook is funny because my parents are on there and they’re lovable and they like to interact with me… and so its kind of strange now to have my mom making some sort of comment about my work and then two comments later someone trying to make a cum joke to me. My parents are fantastic and all my friends are fantastic and they all kind of roll with it but at some point… I actually had a nightmare last night. I just talked to Matt on the phone [about] this nightmare where I was at home and my girlfriend was coming in through the front door and she smiled at me and I said a joke and then somebody, a guy in a hooded sweatshirt came up behind her and started to attack her. My instinct was to run and save her no matter what. And then something clicked, oh no this person is not malicious, he’s just slow or stupid and I had to get him off her without really harming him. And so I did. I grabbed him and then woke up and then I just lay there and was like, oh my God I just had a dream about the internet! [laughter] Really I just had a nightmare of people on Facebook, interacting with people that I love and maybe inadvertently harming them but they don’t know any better.
MacDonald: I think you should put that dream in Howard the Duck.
Zdarsky: [laughs] I think maybe I am turning into Steve Gerber! There was that issue where it was almost all text and he just kind of talked about everything. Maybe I’ll hit that stage. I had therapy this morning, so perfect timing.
MacDonald: This is a question though I’m sure you’ve been asked a lot. Chip, do you wish that Howard didn’t wear any pants?
Zdarsky: [laughs] I don’t care at all! Originally he was clearly a parody of Donald Duck but he’s moved so far past that, you could put him in a gorilla suit and its fine. Its especially funny now that Disney owns Marvel. All the legal injunctions—that’s the first thing that happened after I said yes to this, I got all the original documents where they lay out how Howard has to look to be differentiated from Donald. It’s a fascinating glimpse into comics history. But…honestly I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about pants or no pants on ducks.
MacDonald: Oh Chip, you’ve really changed.
Zdarsky: I know, I really have! I’m so busy now, I can’t think about these ducks and their pants!
MacDonald: Okay on twitter this morning Kelly Sue inspired me to start asking some new questions [in a multi tweet comment, De Connick listed all the questions that men never get asked but women are asked over and over and over], and you’re the first person I’ve interviewed since then, so you’re going to be the guinea pig. What is it like to be a man in comics?
Zdarsky: [laughs] Oh my god! It’s fantastic! Its just fantastic. I loved her rant, it was amazing. But yeah, I wake up every morning and I’m just I feel blessed, I’m a white man living in a Canadian city, I’ve got a beard…
MacDonald: Chip, how do you balance work and family?
Zdarsky: [laughs] I’m very lucky in the sense that my girlfriend is also busy with her job, so we have the same hours. I wake up from anxiety every day and I start working at 8 and then I work until 11 o’clock at night and that’s usually when my girlfriend stops working and so we meet up at 11 o’clock when midnight strikes and we talk about our days and we go to sleep and have our nightmares about the internet. It’s great!
MacDonald: Wow, you know what, you’re living the dream. Literally you’re living a dream.
Zdarsky: When I quit my newspaper job—I did Sex Criminals for almost a year while doing my newspaper job full time which was crazy and dumb.
MacDonald: Just so anyone reading this knows, you did regular comics for the National Post, the big daily paper in Toronto?
Zdarsky: My job title there was graphic columnist, which I made up because I needed one and I wrote articles, I did reporting, I did columns, I drew, I did cartoons, videos. I was kind of a jack of all trades. It was the best job I could’ve hoped for but I just hit this point where I had to focus on something, so I had to quit that job. But I forgot what a freelancer brain is like, where you’re terrified of turning anything down because it will never be offered again. So I had this weird bit for a month or two where I was saying yes to everything and then thought, oh my god. I physically can’t do it. So I know I’m leaving that phase now. I’ve got all these regular jobs, but I’m not accepting too many cover gigs anymore.
MacDonald: You know many of the top writers, a lot of them used to be cartoonists, like Brian Bendis and Brubaker and…
Zdarsky: Seth, isn’t he at Marvel now?
MacDonald: Do you like writing now? You’re just getting into it, but writing, drawing or both, what’s…?
Zdarsky: I’ll always draw something but I can only draw one book a month. I can write two at least, I recognize at some point during the course of Sex Criminals, that Matt doesn’t necessarily have the easier job but he definitely has the job where the time restrictions are easier and I want to give it a shot. With the Kaptara book I want to get Kagan drawing comics again. He’s an insanely successful illustrator here but Infinite Kung Fu came out years ago and I just wanted to show people his work, he’s so good.
MacDonald: He is, he’s amazing. I didn’t realize that Infinite Kung Fu came out that long ago. I think we made it one of our books for the year [at Publishers weekly] actually. They say the way to success is surround yourself with the best, so good move! Just to wrap this up on a Howard note, in the first issue, we set up “Howard the Private Eye” and meeting Spidey and so on but anything else you can say about ongoing storylines that you can tantalize us with?
Zdarsky: All I can say is I feel like I’m luring people into a conventional comic book story and then I’m going to hit them with the weird stuff. I keep sending these emails to my editor saying you know, this is coming up and this is what this means and then I go ohhhhhhhhh boy. I figure if I make it past issue 5 and people stop paying attention, I can do very weird stuff.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 2/4/2015
Waugh! Marvel will release 20 variants covers in April celebrating Howard the Duck in a promotion with the saucy title of “What the Duck??”
“Response to the announcement of the new Howard the Duck series has been staggering,” says Marvel SVP Sales & Marketing David Gabriel. “There were so many talented artists eager to take a quack at drawing a Howard cover we couldn’t resist building an entire variant month around him. This April is going to be WTD certified!”
Howard the Duck, created by Steve Gerber and Val Mayerik, was the face of 70s counterculturalism at 70s Marvel, and then the face of the emerging creator rights battle in the 80s when Gerber sued unsuccessfully to get the rights to the character back. After the disastrous 1986 film, he was the face of George Lucas’s diminishing filmmaking skills. Most recently, a cameo at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy proved that everyone in comics comes back from the dead eventually.
A new Howard the Duck series by Chip Zdarsky and Joe Quinones debuts in March.
Marval released the first four covers—like a previous Wolverine campaign this one is heavy on iconic art poses.
· All-New Hawkeye #2 – WTD Variant Cover by Francesco Francavilla
· Amazing Spider-Man #17 – WTD Variant Cover by W. Scott Forbes
· Rocket Raccoon #10 – WTD Variant Cover by Rob Guillory
· Uncanny Inhumans #0 – WTD Variant Cover by Christian Ward
But more are coming
· All-New Captain America #6
· All-New X-Men #41
· Ant-Man #4
· Daredevil #15
· Deadpool #45 (a.k.a. Deadpool #250)
· Guardians of the Galaxy #26
· Hulk #14
· Inhuman #14
· Legendary Star-Lord #11
· Ms. Marvel #14
· S.H.I.E.L.D. #5
· Silk #3
· Spider-Gwen #3
· Superior Iron Man #7
· Thor #7
· Uncanny Avengers #4
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 1/23/2015
Howard the Duck’s life is in jeopardy, or so the newest Marvel variant cover on the first issue of his ongoing series makes us believe. The new comic book has an interesting new cover that shows Howard in various stages of life. Towards the end of the the seven cycles, fans get a sneak peak at a gravestone.
Howard the Duck #1 will be available for purchase on March 4th.
The gravestone states:
Here Lies Howard T. Duck 1973-2015. “Valiantly gave his life during the Secret Wars.”
Will Howard die before the debut of his ongoing series?
With Chip Zdarsky’s irreverent sense of humor, it’s likely that this is some kind of hoax. The very last image in the evolution cover shows Howard alive and well. As Newsarama states, the duck is playing a part in the upcoming Secret Wars story as he is attached to the “New Quack City” region in the crossover.
To figure out some of the nuts and bolts on how the cover actually works, Marvel sent out a video. It’s important to note that all these covers are numbered and unique.
Marvel stated that the idea for this slightly gimmicky variant cover was born out of the successful launch of the recent Ant-Man #1 shrinking cover.
Marvel Senior Vice President of Sales & Marketing David Gabriel explained:
“The Ant-Man #1 Shrinking Variant was such a successful experiment, we knew we wanted to try it again right away,” Gabriel said. “Each one of these variants is numbered and completely unique, showcasing a different Howard at a different size. Waugh!”
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 8/4/2014
On July 29th, Marvel released a whole bunch of old Howard the Duck comics onto ComiXology for what appears to be no reason. Okay wait, I guess they are fantastic books by the late great Steve Gerber and Gene Colan (among others), but wow, that sure does seem random.
Oh, and Marvel VP David Gabriel recently confirmed that the long out of print Howard the Duck omnibus would be back in print as of October, also for absolutely no reason. What crazy times we live in. Anyway, I’m off to watch the new Guardians of the Galaxy. I hear it’s pretty good.
I picked up Scarlet Witch #1 with the hope that Robinson will eventually be able to fix a character that Bendis broke years ago and Marvel has consistently not been able to do much with.
Fine way of telling, and pleasant article to take information concerning my presentation subject matter, which i am going to deliver in college.
I have to admit that I am liking the Gweenpool’s stories in appendix to Howard, sadly from the image above it seems like she developed hepatitis (maybe due to the different environment of the Marvel universe?) so I guess she won’t last long.