Will Allison

Thought I should post something. I never finished my Supergirl drawing, but when I did the SG one I also did a Powergirl image as well. Since the SG meme's pretty well died out now, but the PG one's only slightly past its sell-by date as of this writing, figured I'd post it up.



I decided to do a redesign to give her a more traditional superhero costume. She's the cousin of the Golden Age Superman (long story), so I copied the shape of his shield symbol for her. The blank yellow still evokes her "boob window" without threatening any catastrophic wardrobe failures. The rest of the outfit's pretty staid; I never understood why a fist-first hardass like Powergirl was always all flashing thighs and cup-spilling cleavage. I liked this meme because there didn't seem to be the weird political undercurrents the Supergirl meme had. I covered up Powergirl in my drawing because it made sense.

The whole meme started here: http://mooncalfe.livejournal.com/27229.html Go look there for more, and see a ton of really great artists!

( It helps to have a copy, to follow along at home... )

Since I barely even look at this journal when I haven't written something new, I missed khyungbird's later comment on my previous post. Sorry about that, Jason. To be fair, I figured I should answer it here, and quote it so people know what I'm answering:

"As the artist of the extraordinarily excellent PERVERT CLUB... what is your opinion on fanservice-heavy romantic comedy comics of the LOVE HINA, VIDEO GIRL AI, etc. vein?

Do you feel that they are sort of a substitute for porn, or that they fulfill an entirely different function? Where do you draw the line? For what matter, which did you get into first?"

I think the "harem" and "magical girlfriend" genres of manga and anime are usually pretty lame, even though that's probably painting with a too-broad brush. But generally, I'm not a fan. I don't think they're necessarily a substitute for pornography, but they share a certain commonality with porn: where porn creates a fantasy of easy sex, "magical girlfriend" shows create a fantasy of easy love. Chobits, Oh! My Goddess, and Video Girl Ai all feature an intensely mediocre male lead that suddenly acquires a woman who loves him instantly, and won't leave him. The Tenchi Muyo, Love Hina etc. series usually have a main female lead, but don't rule out any of the other women being a romantic interest; the male lead essentially has his choice. All of the women are, in a sense, already his. And, by extension, the reader: do you like a certain "type" besides the female lead? Well, here's a bunch of stereotypical female characters, take your pick.

Where I'd draw the line would probably be in the amount of sexually explicit scenes in the series. Which I "got into" first? I'm not certain exactly what that means, but I'd guess porn by a country mile: I was reading sexually-explicit material pretty early in life, and only became aware of "magical girlfriend" shows later. As far as professionally, I drew the "harem" series Pervert Club first, but planned to draw sexually explicit comics before then. My involvement in each essentially came from the same place: dissatisfaction with other material in the genre, and a desire to alter some of the distasteful subtext in it. I can't say I've been exactly successful with either effort. But I continue making the porn because it seems like a "bigger" genre: while you can easily find alternatives to the "harem" genre in manga, porn is practically a medium unto itself. So I continue chiseling away at it.

Or maybe I'm just a twisted freak.

( Too long, didn't read. )

At Marvel and DC, I can think of two currently-employed women writers: Gail Simone, and Devin Grayson.

At Marvel and DC, I can think of three women pencil/ink artists currently working: Amanda Connor, Colleen Doran, and Pia Guerra.

Marvel and DC combined represent roughly 65% of the American-produced comic book industry.

My personal theory is that the reason comics seem so hostile to women is because, essentially, women's talents are not considered valuable to most of the market. The two dominant publishers don't produce works that would appeal to women. Almost all of the comics they publish feature a very narrow artistic style, so that rules out women who would want to write or draw comics aimed at anyone other than a 12-25 year old male. The overall statement seems to be, "You're welcome to work in comics, as long as you want to write/draw Spider-Man or Batman (in roughly the same style they've always been depicted.)" If that applies to you, congratulations. If not, tough shit on you.

Certainly, there are many female creators in the industry. Many women work for the independent publishers, where the demographics and editorial dictates are not so strict. But remember, the indies only account for about 35% of the industry at BEST. Most comics by women don't even show up at your local comic shop.

And while women might someday become prominent in the English-language manga market, that doesn't really do non-manga comics by women much good, does it?

So what can a female, non-manga artist or writer do in this industry? Either work in the boy's-action idiom, work at the indies for no money, or avoid the medium entirely. There's lots more money in screenwriting and book/magazine illustration, after all...And that's how comics become that much poorer, weaker, and more obsolete.

My point is, the comics industry SEEMS hostile to women because IT ACTUALLY IS. Outside of behavior at conventions, outside of artists' depictions of scantily-clad heroines, comics simply do not value women's work enough. And unless and until the leading publishers begin to expand their published offerings, the industry will continue to stagnate.

Alarmingly huge list of pages in the Batgirl meme:



http://www.livejournal.com/users/himynameisjamie/345568.html

I am such a stodgy traditionalist...







http://www.livejournal.com/users/andiwatson/37925.html
http://www.livejournal.com/users/himynameisjamie/342720.html
http://www.livejournal.com/users/dryponder/56513.html
http://www.livejournal.com/users/baconistasty/76194.html
http://www.livejournal.com/users/jodycody/16090.html
http://www.livejournal.com/users/scrawlgirl/9277.html
http://www.livejournal.com/users/haikuninja/180106.html
http://www.livejournal.com/users/superhappy/207806.html
http://www.livejournal.com/users/ocarina/406123.html
http://www.livejournal.com/users/tedprior/156064.html
http://www.livejournal.com/users/kawaiikiwi/178091.html

( Stupid comic book industry. )

I was 19 years old, sitting in a dorm room in the University of Texas at Austin, when my life changed.

He said, "I'm thinking of publishing my comic books. I figure I'm not going to get a chance at any other company, so I might as well make my own. Want to get in on it?" I don't remember the exact words, but I remember the sentiment. I also remember the setting, one of the mirror-image dorm rooms of UT, me sitting on one bed and Dean sitting on the opposite, identical bed. Fluorescent lights beaming down on us as Dean Hsieh spoke the opportunity I'd been waiting my whole life to hear.

"Fuck yes!" Maybe I said that, I don't remember. I know that's what I thought, though. I was going to be a comic book artist. A real comic book! Created by me! This is the start of something big!

I wasn't a good artist. I drew sort of like Tatsuya Egawa struck retarded. But at the time, I thought I was The Shit. Why wouldn't people want to read my comics? I'd better come up with something quick...

I decided to go with a throwaway idea. I was getting tired of "harem anime", that genre of lovable everyman surrounded by cute girls exemplified by "Tenchi Muyo" or "Ah! My Goddess". What if the protagonist was weirder than the girls surrounding him? What if the girls were too wrapped up in their own obsessions to even notice him? Somehow, that turned into "Pervert Club", a story about a high-school transvestite and the all-girl club of fetishists that hoped to use him as a pawn to take over the school. To anchor it, I plundered two characters I'd created for a friend's fanzine. I figured it'd be a funny comic, quickly forgotten because within five years, tops, I'd be working for the Big Companies, making the Big Money. I can draw Spider-Man as well as the next shmoe...

I forgot to mention, Dean came from San Antonio. I remember visiting his parents; hard-working, hyper-motivated Taiwanese who owned a restaurant and bankrolled our publishing venture. After visiting SA for the first time, meeting various comic people that lived and worked there, I remember what I said to Dean. "Your parents are cool, but San Antonio fucking SUCKS."

It's ten years later. I live in San Antonio. I work for a comic book company. "Pervert Club" has been reprinted, and I get to sit at a table at cons listening to the same dumbfuck jokes I heard 10 years earlier. (One stupid cosplayer saying to his friend, "Hey [insert stupid cosplayer friend's name here], you should buy this book, since you're a pervert!" They never buy the book if they make that joke.) It's my most commercially successful work, tied with a comic book I drew about a suicidally-depressed rabbit. I make less money per year than a migrant farm worker.

The moral of the story is, you can't know what the future holds. Even when you have a goal that comes true like, "I will be a professional comic book artist", you don't know how that will actually turn out. Maybe you'll become rich. Maybe you'll become famous. But I guarantee you won't accurately predict the exact form that wealth or fame takes. I guarantee you won't predict the idea that people love the most. You might spend ten years creating works that are better written, better drawn and (in your opinion) more commercially viable, but that doesn't mean anyone else will care about them.
Your absolute worst idea, the one you attach no value to whatsoever, might be the one that hits. Your precious babies? The ones you've put your absolute best effort into, your devotion and love and back-breaking labor? People might not give half a shit about.

Don't take this shit lightly. Every single comic book (or OEL manga, call it whatever) you make is important. Nothing you create is disposable, nothing you create is worthless. Don't assume you're just going to get your foot in the door with a throwaway idea. That throwaway might be your best chance. That throwaway might be the thing people love years later, might be the thing that was more important to them than it ever was to you. That throwaway might be the only thing you're ever remembered for.

Don't think I'm being fatalistic here, or being a bitter old man. On a good day, I pretty much still think I'm The Shit. On a bad day, I worry about the fact I have no health insurance. But I haven't given up. I've lived ten years in grinding poverty, I've scrubbed toilets to make ends meet, and I still haven't given up. I still make comics. So don't write me off as bitter. Don't write me off as a has-been or never-was. Because if the stars align, if everything falls into place, I might make a comic that will put you to shame. Because I've eaten so much shit at this point, I've got nothing to lose. And I'm never, ever, ever going to stop making comics.

Don't take anything for granted, because you never know where you're going to wind up.

On this day in 1810, time-traveling wizard MARC BOLAN, THE DESTROYER died playing "Solid Gold Easy Action" from the bell tower of a small church in Hidalgo, giving Mexico its independence from Spain. Spain retaliated by playing David Bowie's "Life On Mars?", but it was too little, too late. From this day forward, Mexico would no longer have to listen to Bowie, Roxy Music, or the Bay City Rollers ever again (after a decade of war).




Viva Marc Bolan! Viva Mexico!

The game is this:

A. Go to http://www.musicoutfitters.com
B. Enter the year you graduated from high school in the search function.
C. Bold for the songs you like, strike through the ones you hate and underline your favorite. Do nothing to the ones you don't remember (or don't care about).

( Now you are set adrift on memory bliss! )

Happy Birthday, Chynna!

The internet's a strange place. If you read my journal, you'd think I was the world's biggest asshole, pontificating like a brain-damaged Dr. Doom in size extra-husky armor. (And you'd be right, accursed FOOL! I make no groveling apologies to the likes of YOU!) I've written plenty of stuff in my years in the industry that make me seem like an arrogant prick, so I guess I am one. I don't mean to be. I just get all hopped up on the vast cosmic injustice inflicted on the exalted medium of comic books (surely the greatest and most important of art forms, take that music! Woo, burrrnn!). Then, the internet just lets me make a fool of myself, like that teetotaler friend that tells you when you're drunk, "Yes, it's a good idea to show your balls to that police officer." Sorry officer. I was just passing through when my zipper fell open all by itself...

But even though I walk through the internet with my e-dick hanging out all sloppy, I at least feel like the things I'm saying are fundamentally reasonable. Like Dudley Moore's Arthur, I at least have a limousine of knowledge to cart my stupid net-drunk ass around. I talk a lot of shit, but it's only to attempt to make my point, not to insult people personally or demonize anyone. Unfortunately, the point usually gets obscured in the sideshow.

I've seen a lot of sideshow the past few weeks on the internet. And I think I know how it works now. Basically, someone makes some extremist declaration somewhere. People who then agree with said viewpoint then champion it all around, using it as a stalking-horse to advance some agenda they hold. The opposition lines up to convert it into a straw man, then both sides watch what happens like spectators at a bum fight. Who gets the sandwich?

I've had it happen with my own posts. Last year's San Diego Con report could basically be summed up as, "The two major American companies are facing lots of competition from other media sources and manga, and have not adjusted their publishing strategies adequately to capitalize on this. Artists should take this as an opportunity." Wow, that sounds like a marketing report or something! Good thing I wrote it with a lot of fuck-words in it, so it could be easily translated into, "Superhero comics are fuckin' old an' outdated and go to bed, old man and manga fuckin' WROKKKS (loud guitar noise)!" I got plenty of new friends who I don't know, that I've never spoken to once in either real life or online. Basically, people who don't know me from Adam, who were just lining up to see the fate of the sandwich. Wonder why I didn't write a Con report this year?

Anything I write online will just get turned into the idiot version of what I'm trying to say, which means I must be idiotic. And that's the thing that brings people around, so hooray! But the heart of the matter is saying stupid shit on the internet does not actually accomplish anything. Fucking around on messageboards is not the same as drawing a comic. Posting incoherent screeds is not publishing, and does not establish you as a force in the industry. You might become slightly more visible momentarily, but that's just because you're the latest gladiator in the hobo arena. It doesn't mean you've "arrived."

Whether a person has a career in comics depends on how much work that person actually finishes. Keep your eyes on the target. Talking about how "you're the young generation, and you've got something to say", or drawing comics about how it's Totally Radical Awesome to Draw Comics doesn't actually add up to anything. This cuts across all the various creator tribes, whether superhero, indie, or OEL manga. Most of you spend too much time congratulating each other on your coolness and not enough time learning your craft. I'm not saying this to dis you, or to position myself as superior. I'm saying this because you'd better start studying, because you will be tested on this. And that test comes in the form of your livelihood. If you don't get better, if you don't learn and grow, you'll be forgotten like all the other bums. And I think I can say this to you, because I'm just as much of a loudmouth bum as you, and I ain't got shit. Like James Brown said, "Talkin' loud ain't sayin' nothin'."

So, basically, shut the fuck up and get back to work. I will if you will!

( Pictures and whatnot )

...lots of fun with picture pages.

Lots of fun with crayons and with pencils.

When I'm not being a screeching bitchface about comics, I sometimes draw them! Comics, I mean. Not screeching bitchfaces.

I drew a picture of Velma Dinkley from "Scooby-Doo"! She's dreamy.



Okay, it's not really comics, just a shitty pencil sketch I threw like 3 different opacity layers on in Photoshop. But hey, at least I'm not just some random asshole whining about comics. I'm a random asshole that can almost draw Scooby-Doo characters.

More tomorrow! Or not, whichever.

Okay, another weird thing I noticed going to the movies:

DC Comics has a new logo animation to put in front of the movies and such, just like Marvel does. And just like Marvel, it's made up of a bunch of rapid images from the comics. Only it's a little bit different:

We open on a bunch of dots, like the Benday dots of a comic page. Light shoots up through the dots, reminding us of video pixels, before we zoom out and back to form a picture plane.

Light begins flickering through the dots, opening up to form comic book images.

The first image we see is a close-cropped shot of a woman's face, her eyes wide in terror.

The next image visible is a man's head, his eyes narrowed slits, his jaw clenched in a teeth-baring grimace.

The final image is a close up of a man's clenched fist, sailing through the air to land a haymaker punch.

We close on a black screen with the new swirls-n-star DC Comics logo.

Now, I'm no Scott McCloud, but you play comic book panels to me like that, I start connecting them together. And it reads like a guy beating up a woman. Maybe the logo is the fourth panel of that little story? The same comic symbol for unconsciousness that Bluto has floating around his head after Popeye gives him a spinach-powered concussion?

Maybe this should be the final logo image?





Aw, what the hell, I'm feeling generous. I made a cover for your next Batman comic, DC. No need for payment, helping others is thanks enough:

A friend of mine came up to me the other day after seeing "Batman Begins". He had apparently taken quiet umbrage with my flesh-tearing screed on "Sin City". My point wasn't that if you liked "Sin City" on any level that you were stupid. Only that if you liked it as a serious adult drama you were VERY POSSIBLY stupid. And if you thought that it brought dignity and respect to the medium of comics, then yeah, you're a complete dumbfuck.

"You know, after seeing Batman, then hearing the way people were talking about it, I think I know what you meant."

There are some ideas that just won't die in comicbookdom. One is that arguing whether one superhero could beat up another is fun, another is that comics would sell millions if they were a dollar each, and a third is that a movie is the ultimate seal of acceptance and popularity. I don't know where that last one comes from, since we've had blockbuster movies based on comics for decades now, and comic sales have only gone down. So when people who should know better act like a movie about explosions is going to turn the whole world into fanatical readers, I get sad inside my heart.

I realize now that when I got into comics, I inadvertently enrolled in Permanent Junior High School, so I'll break it down in those terms: No matter how much Comics tries to hide behind the big kid of Movies in the dodgeball game of entertainment, it's still going to wind up with balls in its face. You'll never win like that. Stop displaying such a massive inferiority complex toward your chosen medium, you fucking pussy.

I have three arguments against people who get all starry-eyed over comic book movies:

1. It's a movie, 99% of the people who see it have forgotten every second by the time they've pissed away their $4 soda. It's not the start of some great dynasty, it's the end of a franchise. It's a one-way street that leads AWAY from comic books.

2. The medium of film might be a close cousin to comics, but it's not the same, and the act of watching a film is completely different than the act of reading a comic. Each medium can do certain things better than the other, and a person who's interested in one might not be interested in the other.

3. It is a fucking movie about BATMAN you fucking TOOL. (If arguing about "Sin City", replace the word "Batman" with the words "hookers and Uzis".)


P.S.: I saw "Batman Begins" and really liked it, despite the doofy MacGuffin Machine. It's a real good Batman movie, so if you want some Bat-related entertainment I'd recommend it. I'm not lactating rainbows over it, though.

[1] Total number of films I own on DVD/video:

VHS: 7, by my count: Ghost in the Shell, Blade Runner, The "Street Fighter" movie series, Hard Boiled and The Killer. All back at my parent's home, since I wore them out.
DVD: 47, I think. 12 of which are seasons of either "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" or "Angel".

[2] The last film I bought:

Wait, actually bought with my own money? Didn't get as a gift? Hmm....ummm... Wait, I know this... Oh, I'll just say it was season seven of Buffy. Everything else since then has been bought for me through one circumstance or another.


[3] The last film I watched:

Revenge of the Sith like everyone else, duh. No, I mean...that new Wong Kar-Wai movie! 2525 or whatever! See? I'm a cultured cineaste, just like you! Interested in movies where people have affairs and stare intensely into cameras! I'm not a mall-going suburban drone!

[4] Five films that I watch a lot or that mean a lot to me:

Star Wars "Episodes 4-6" (Chinese Bootleg--I mean, "Original Theatrical" versions)
Citzen Kane (Just because someone lists this doesn't mean they're being pretentious. Stop whining.)
Taxi Driver (Are you talking to me?)
Scarface (1980 Mountain of Cocaine version)
Rocky Horror Picture Show (I'm the only person that doesn't yell shit)

[5] Finally, tag five people to do this meme:

I don't think anyone else should have to participate in this nerd-dick measuring contest. "Whee! Look how much money I spent on movies! Obviously I am a TRUFAN of the bold medium of cinema!"

Okay, once again the Angel Alcohol has visited the Gentry Allison, so I start posting insanely ranty shit in my livejournal that I regret upon morning's light. So here's a thing that has started to bother me for a couple of weeks:

You DO know that "Sin City" is a totally dogshit movie, right?

( ranty rant rant )