Category: Writer’s Blog

It’s not much of a secret that in our household, Dawn is the much bigger anime/manga fan than I am. I would say I missed the era growing up that might have gotten me into it, but both Battle of the Planets and Robotech were readily available on my television during my formative years.

Which might have been part of the problem. I had no idea that both series were gutted and reworked editions of their original source (Science Ninja Team Gatchaman and Macross, respectively), I just got bored with them. Even the whole “Holy crap Roy Fokker DIED!” moment which I remember hearing about on the elementary school playground wasn’t enough to really capture my interest. I was happy enough with good ol’ American cartoons (ironically mostly animated in Asia, a trend which continues to the present day). Anime was stuff like Speed Racer. It was cheap, and dumb, and I wanted nothing to do with it.

The first break in this conviction came in the 1990s, when two friends who were regular visitors to L.A.’s “Little Tokyo” sat me down and made me watch the subtitled version of Akira (thankfully not the dubbed one, which has some really bad choices of voice actors). To say I was floored would be an understatement. Here was a product with all the stylistic hallmarks of the anime style I had come to be revulsed by, but attached to gorgeous animation and a very adult, very engaging storyline.

In the wake of Akira, I decided to give anime offerings another chance… but back in those days they still weren’t quite as accessible as they are now. I may have been willing to give it a look, but not to go out of my way to do so, so there needed to be some more time, during which anime/manga acceptance in the U.S. really took off and it started popping up everywhere, also no doubt helped along by the popularity of video games like the Final Fantasy series.

I still didn’t particularly gravitate to the look of it, but those same friends did end up entertaining me with episodes of Ranma 1/2 and Lum, and I believe are responsible for first showing me a piece which has become one of my personal favorite films: Ninja Scroll. Ninja Scroll still just fills me with joy every time I watch it. I explain this feeling as the android Ash from Alien does: “I admire its purity”. It’s a gloriously, insanely uncompromising 99 minutes of awesomeness. For instance, one of the central conceits is that a bunch of supernatural demons from Hell want to steal gold. Not souls. They could give a damn about your soul, they’re after money… though they’ll happily kill you in horrible ways to get it. Nor are the mortal protagonists really impressed by this whole “demon” business. It plays out as this utterly bizarre version of a revenge/heist film, like if John McLane was fighting Satan instead of Hans Gruber. In fact, there you go… take how great Die Hard is, and add a scene with a hero who, despite suffering several broken bones, starts repeatedly headbutting Satan in the face.

In the late 90s, we got Princess Mononoke in wide-release in the U.S., which was my first exposure not only to the genius of Hayao Miyazaki, but to the idea that a decent English voice dub could exist that matched the mouth movements of the characters. I’m game for any Miyazaki flick these days, old or new. I don’t love them all equally, but the man has a direct conduit to the visuals of dreams.

The TV side of anime still wasn’t grabbing me, though. I gave up on Dragonball Z after watching it every day for a week and a half and the same fight was still happening. It’s a pacing issue I personally find excruciating, and anime is rife with it. But not all, which made it all the more odd to me as a phenomenon. One of my absolute favorite cartoon series ever is the fantastic Cowboy Bebop, a show I still heartily recommend to people who have a blanket “anime-shun” going on. I also really enjoyed the 1st series or so of Slayers, where unexpected craziness like Noonsa abounded (no, not spoiling it). But for the most part, when Dawn has her latest Netflix anime playing on the TV while she draws, it still fails to float my boat, even though it might be rather mega-popular in the otaku subculture. The only recent exception I had to that was Claymore — Claymore was a show where I had to just quit trying to write and go sit and watch. I think, again, it was something about the pacing.

In fact, the other day I tried out an experiment I’d been meaning to do for awhile. If I picked up and started reading, say, a Dragonball Z manga, would I enjoy it more than the anime version? After all, one of the great things about the comics format is that, while the creators can use little tricks to extend or compress the “time” that passes, it’s ultimately up to the reader how long they want to linger on a certain panel. It’s entirely possible in a comic for a character to shout “I’ve only got a fraction of a second to act!” and at the same time be taking that action. It can leave us a bit incredulous still in this modern age (“stop talking and DO IT”), but in animation, there’s no way it ends up being anything but completely ridiculous since a true, fixed amount of measurable time is passing to the audience.

So: I look at the manga, and there’s an image of Son Goku, sweat dripping from his brow as he thinks something along the lines of, “That was my most powerful attack! How can he possibly have survived?! Could it be true? Is his power level just that high?” In the cartoon, we’re lingering on his grimacing, twitching face for several seconds while he gets all that dialogue out. In the manga, as soon as I’m finished reading, I can jump to the next panel without feeling like the momentum died mid-combat. And while the fight I read in the manga did take a few chapters to reach its conclusion, the chapters were maybe 12 manga-size pages or so, in other words fairly short.

I admit I didn’t buy it (it was a big book and I’d only consumed a tiny fraction), but I also admit I had a certain reluctance at putting it back, and that was surprising. The Dragonball Z manga had held my interest in a way the anime never managed, at least in its early stages (this was a collection of the beginning stories). So are the pacing problems I can’t deal with a result of a too literal translation of manga to anime, to where the anime is more a sort of glorified motion comic (and you can read my opinions on motion comics here) than something which plays to animation’s strengths?

Cowboy Bebop started out animated. Slayers was a novel before anything else. The exception appears to be Claymore, which did start in manga form but got me hooked regardless. What’s the magic formula? Maybe it’s no more complicated than Sturgeon’s Law: “90% of everything is crud.” But hey, at least nowadays with manga and anime, I’m willing to check for that other 10%.

Dawn and I both share a deep regard for cuteness where cuteness Should Not Be. She goes further than I do in finding abominations to be somehow adorable, cooing over such horrid things as lobsters, zombie horses, and of course, the man she married… but I admit to a dark appreciation for those who can take a concept like a decaying corpse and make it seem somehow cuddly.

To judge by the huge pile of plush, huggable Cthulhu dolls offered up (and purchased) every year at Comic-Con, we are not alone in this aesthetic. A cuddly Cthulhu is one of the definitions of irony: an “incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs.” Not rain on your wedding day, so much as running into the Grim Reaper on the pickets at a Pro-Life rally. As a concept, it’s wrong. It’s bizarre. But such ideas fascinate me, and, dare I say, give me warm fuzzies to think about, with or without a Great Old One to hug.

There’s a reason those old PSAs from the 50s and 60s instructing kids about nuclear war have been parodied so much down the years since. They were slapping a happy face onto one of the most horrible fates mankind ever came close to inflicting on itself, and looking back on it the irony was so palpable that we wonder why little Timmy never raised his hand to ask, “Ma’am, exactly how the heck is getting under my desk supposed to protect me from a fireball that wipes out the city?”

But if not for those cheerfully incongruous films, with their bright cheery music and announcers who sounded like they’d spent the morning snorting candy canes and mainlining maple syrup, we might never have had such wonderful things as Vault Man from the Fallout series. I wager that’s because science fiction writers are often fearful that what they’re coming up with is too far “out there” to really resonate with an audience, so it’s simultaneously comforting and horrifying to be able to point to real-world examples that weren’t even meant as a joke. I remember back when I first broached the idea of zombie-based cosmetics and there were protestations along the lines of “BLECH!” — or more succinctly, that it was inconceivable that people would ever put that stuff on their faces. All I had to do in response was link an article on the ingredients already used in modern make-up, and point out the whole Botox trend, besides. Botox is poison. You poison your face. If zombie products could get rid of someone’s wrinkles, does anyone really think that at least a segment of the populace wouldn’t go for it?

Well, in any case, these are the reasons I enjoy the little “media interludes” for Zombie Ranch, where Dawn and I can showcase horrible things occurring in an adorable and cartoony manner. While always hinting that somewhere behind all the toothy smiles, there’s still quite a lot of teeth.

Plus, Chibi Frank. I’m guessing Frank will be highly, highly unamused if he ever sees that.

First off, thanks to everyone so far who voted in the “favorite character” poll. Suzie’s winning by a landslide, which is probably a good sign considering she’s our leading lady, but I’m glad to see the rest getting a handful of votes as well (even a couple for poor ol’ Zeke!). I think the outcome I most feared would have been “Nah, no favorites” winning out, even though I explained at length last week how that was my own perspective as the writer. I’m hoping you readers who voted that way did so for similar reasons (valuing the ensemble as a whole) rather than just not caring. Of course, those who really didn’t care about any of the characters probably wouldn’t have bothered to vote.

I’m thinking about doing a similar poll for the minor characters, just for curiosity’s sake, even though they’ve had hardly any development to go on. One of my friends told me the other day that his favorites in fiction, both in his own work and others, tend to be the background characters; the people that, in his words, “don’t do anything”. This doesn’t mean they can’t enable the plot or illustrate the themes of a piece, but they’re not central to the action itself… for instance, one of his examples was Hattori Hanzo from Kill Bill, who certainly is a figure important to the narrative, but is definitely not a lead hero or villain. Another person he brought up was The Jesus from The Big Lebowski, who I don’t remember doing or saying anything of particular import, but who I certainly remember.

It’s an interesting thought. Again, I’m happy with the response to Suzie, because Suzie more than anyone embodies the Ranch, and the Ranch is the name of the game. But minor characters are fun to play around with. In some sense they’re like a writing exercise… can I make this person interesting even though I don’t have pages devoted to them? Deputy Jimmy and the Sheriff garnered some response despite being in only three comics so far. “Wild” Will hit a nerve with only a single panel, which is fantastic (and for the record, feeling like you want to punch him in the face is a perfectly valid reaction).

You never know who people are going to latch onto, or maybe even who you yourself as a creator might get more interested in. Huck Finn started out second fiddle to Tom Sawyer, but eventually ended up star of his own book, a book mostly considered as far superior to its predecessor. Sitcoms have been spinning off supporting characters into their own series for decades (Gomer Pyle USMC, anyone?). Wolverine started out as a minor villain in The Incredible Hulk, and is now one of the biggest franchises in all comicsdom.

Sometimes, a particularly memorable minor character will surprise everyone with how much momentum they possess. They become almost instant fan favorites. Given time, they don’t even just “spin-off”… they might even grow to take over the entire narrative. Example?

Popeye, whose first appearance is recorded here. One of the most famous cartoon characters in all the world started off as a random guy helping the main characters with their seagoing commute. Nowadays people everywhere know of Popeye and Olive Oyl, but I doubt you’d find many who know of Olive’s brother Castor Oyl, or her former beau Harold Hamgravy, and the existence of a comic once titled “Thimble Theater” would be met with blank looks.

I don’t plan on Zombie Ranch evolving into “The Deputy Jimmy Show” anytime in the foreseeable future, but I like the idea he might have an interesting story to tell, and maybe someday, we’ll tell it. It’s one of the most fun aspects for me of a series like Astro City or Fables, where you never know when the folks in the background of an early arc might get a turn in the spotlight later on.

It’s not something to be forced, or even expected, just enjoyed, both as a creator and a reader. So here’s to the “do-nothings” — they might be minors, but we still dig ’em.

Am I allowed to shout that without being on a golf course? Do they still shout that on golf courses? Doesn’t matter I suppose, it’s not even spelled the same in print (the golf shout is “fore!”, if you must know).

Here, we’re moving on to Episode Four in the comic, and it will be our first addition to the storyline structure since I installed it a few months ago. I hope everything goes smoothly. If not, well, I comfort myself that even folks like Kris Straub seem to still have website/update SNAFUs. Sometimes I regret the whole decision to update just after midnight, since I ain’t as young as I used to be and tend to start nodding off prior to that these days unless I force myself awake. On the other hand, it does make for some convenient “settling in at the office” viewing for our fans around the GMT zone.

The Rapture got postponed until October 21st. I never know how to feel about the throng of disappointed believers whenever these end of the world jobbies occur. On the one hand, it must be depressing for them to still be here after zero hour (particularly since the whole crux of the Rapture is if you’re still here afterwards, you weren’t worthy of being saved); on the other hand, they’re praying and hoping for the world to end — a world that I by and large happen to like, even if I do have student loans I’m still paying off.

One of these days I’ll probably be getting deeper into the aspect of religion as it relates in the Zombie Ranch world, where an apocalypse well and truly occurred. If you were reading between the lines at the beginning of Episode 2, you’d notice that Suzie is quoting words from the traditional Christian burial rites, an indication that a belief in the Big G has not entirely collapsed even though some parts of Revelation may have arguably come to pass. Religious themes are something I think every zombie story has to deal with sooner or later, because of how intrinsically most major religions are tied in with a particular concept of life beyond death and the dispositions of souls (or their equivalents). “When there is no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth”, etc.

But Zombie Ranch is a story from the perspective of practical folks. Uncle Chuck might be the closest thing they’ve got to a philosopher, and he seems to be a living example that the line between insight and bullcrap can be a mighty thin one (even if the bulls aren’t around to crap any longer). In any case, pondering the fine points of spirituality isn’t high on the list of priorities at the Z Ranch, but you can bet if you told them the end of the world was coming, they’d thank you graciously for the warning, but still be up as usual for work the next day. After all, some of them have already seen an apocalypse, and although some things changed forever, many more stayed exactly the same.

So in case you haven’t been keeping up on the Facebook and Twitter stuff, we proudly announce that as of last week, Zombie Ranch #2 is “on the shelves” for purchase courtesy of Indyplanet.com. This is the full print version and comes directly from their site, which means some shipping and handling charges will be involved, but if you do want to get your paws on it, you can click HERE. Those of you lucky enough to be joining us down in San Diego this July should have the option of purchasing a signed copy directly from our booth, as well.

As for the digital download option I mentioned last week, it looks like that’s still not live yet, but I’ll try to keep an eye on it and announce when it’s available.

Also, Zombie Ranch got to be included as some background scenery in Mark Driscoll’s “L33t”. Check it out!

http://l33t.tuskland.info/l33t/2011/05/09/the-joke-in-panel-3/

http://l33t.tuskland.info/l33t/2011/05/12/the-method/

That’s the news, now for the opinion column. A couple of months ago I was at lunch with visiting frequent commenter (and old friend) Andrew, and amongst other things we talked of Zombie Ranch. I asked him a question that I often like to ask of fans of the series: “Who’s your favorite character?”

He answered, of course, but then did something I hadn’t expected — which was to ask me the same question. I paused, rolling the thought around in my brain… and then, truthfully, I gave my answer.

I don’t have one.

Pondering why that was, I figured that from my perspective as the writer of the series, it felt instinctually unfair to my characters if I were to favor one over another. Maybe that’d be different if I was writing a comic with a single character focus such as “Batman” (I mean hey! His name’s on the book!), but though Suzie is nominally the main protagonist, Zombie Ranch to me is more of an ensemble piece a la “Justice League” or “Uncanny X-Men”. And really, can’t you just tell when a writer gets ahold of one of those ensemble books but has one or two clear favorites out of the group? Everyone else seems to suffer a bit at the expense of the chosen ones.

Are some of our characters more developed than others at the moment? Absolutely, and I’m not guaranteeing everyone will get equal time (poor Zeke sure didn’t), but I’ve been doing my best to present each member of the main cast as a distinct person in their own right, with certain virtues and also certain faults. You the readers are welcome to pass judgment upon them, but I’m keeping my personal opinions out of it. I’m here to tell a story, not preach a sermon.

I don’t know what Alan Moore’s feelings on the subject are, but I have to admit one of the things that I always respected most about his writing was his ability to put his personal politics and feelings aside and just present people in his work. A professed Pagan and political Anarchist, Moore nonetheless can present very right-wing characters such as SMAX or Rorschach as having admirable qualities, while his freedom loving V (with the Vendetta) or well-meaning Adrian Veidt engage in methods or solutions that are highly questionable if not outright horrific. It’s not always the case with his writing, but in many of his works he will present the motives of “hero” and “villain” alike, chronicling their actions — and then he steps back and lets what has happened percolate into the user’s own subjective thoughts and feelings. As his immortal last line of Watchmen informs us: “I leave it entirely in your hands”.

No matter how outrageous the setting, I think the drama of believable people (or people substitutes) is much harder to wrangle than that of a Mary Sue insert triumphing over their latest installment of 2-dimensional straw men in service of whatever the writer’s agenda happens to be. Even in a gag strip that sort of thing can get old, much less an ongoing story — and contrarily, even an epic tale of Good versus Evil like the Lord of the Rings can have its nuance in characters like Gollum, and its constant reminders that the potential for evil can lurk in the purest of hearts.

But do what you will with that observation. I leave it entirely in your hands. 😀

Well here we are with the end of ‘Episode 3’, and it doesn’t look like Mrs. McCarty cooled off, after all (did anyone besides the Sheriff really think she would? And even he was probably just engaged in some wishful thinking). As has become tradition we will be pausing for a snazzy cover image next week, then we’ll continue in two. I am pretty happy right now that we managed to keep the comics going on schedule through not just one but two convention appearances. This is a good sign, considering that this coming Autumn we seem to be in line for four different conventions in a span of seven weeks: Wizard World L.A. at the end of September, then APE, Long Beach, and finally the newest kid on the block, the Comikaze Expo at the beginning of November.

But the really, really big news (which I held off announcing here out of respect in promoting our more immediate shows) is this:

ZOMBIE RANCH IS GOING TO SAN DIEGO COMIC-CON!

“Now Clint”, you think, “This is nothing new. You guys have been going to San Diego every July for years.” Gentle reader, this is true — but we have never been able to have an exhibitor presence there, even though we’d been trying since 2009. I’d even begun to think the bar was too high now, and our efforts too humble in comparison with the other creators out there wanting Small Press space (which not only requires application but a jury review for acceptance). As of mid-April, I was happily proven wrong as I got the call that a wait list space had opened up, and we qualified for it: were we still interested?

Well, the two operative words there were “hell” and “yeah”. It’s going to mean a very different sort of Comic-Con than we’ve gotten used to, and I don’t want to overstate anything about what this means for our legitimacy as creators (from our attendee experience, Small Press can still be a lonely area at times), but there’s no doubting that SDCC is the Big One where comics and other aspects of pop culture are concerned (and the other “Big One” can hold off on striking California for now, plz k thx).

We’re excited, and for the first time ever we’ll actually be stationary targets that you can feasibly find on the show floor: Small Press K-4, under the label “Lab Reject Studios”. I think I made noises before that Dawn and I were putting together a little company to market our efforts, and while it’s not entirely formalized yet, there it is. I even have the business cards to prove it. 😀

As far as Zombie Ranch goes, Issue #2 should be available for purchase off of IndyPlanet soon (we’re also ordering up a stack for San Diego if you’re going and would rather purchase one in person). That’s the print version. If you pay attention to the polls we occasionally put up, you’ll see I’ve been asking who might be interested in a digital download — that’s because IndyPlanet is currently in the process of adding a digital component to their store, so once that goes live anyone interested in tossing 99 cents that way gets their own (I presume PDF) copy. I’ll pass on further details about that once the feature goes live, at this time they’re still working on it.

Speaking of which, I hope the majority of you have been enjoying the new “Storyline” navigation I installed courtesy of ComicPress. I know I’m still seeing the occasional new reader who gets to the end of Episode 1 and then stops, presumably not realizing there’s more story, but if there’s a better way to structure things I think it’s something Dawn will have to figure out, and so far she hasn’t had time. It’s highly ironic since when I advise other webcomic people I’m always going on about the importance of intuitive site navigation, and I think at least a portion of new readers are getting lost on ours right now. Unfortunately, those same people are the least likely to actually leave a comment that they were having trouble.

Anyhow, as mentioned next week will be the comic cover for Issue 3 (yes, I know we do it backwards from most webcomics, story first, cover after… that seems to also have become tradition), but I’ll have a brand new blog for your perusal. See you then!

Wow, did I double up on the strange references for this blog title or what? Mostly it’s a quote from the classic movie version of Wizard of Oz, as the “Wizard” is discovered to be just a small, mortal man operating the large, scary fake head and special effects the heroes were in awed terror of on their first meeting. I’ll have to explain the other part even further, for anyone who didn’t grow up in Southern California. Or the Cold War era.

*ahem* You see, back before the Berlin Wall was torn down and the breakup of the Soviet Union, there was a more figurative “wall” between Western and Eastern Europe that the free world referred to as the Iron Curtain. It was a border not just difficult to cross physically but ideologically as well, and its dissolution was one of the better things to happen in the last few decades, in my damned opinion. I mean, for one thing I know we have some fans out there in Poland and Hungary who might not be reading Zombie Ranch otherwise!

So California has its own snarky reference to the Iron Curtain  which gets applied to the border between Los Angeles County and Orange County, because Orange County is a traditionally very conservative bastion in what might otherwise be considered a very left-wing state. This is, of course, vastly simplifying the make-up of California regional politics, but regardless, tell a fellow Angeleno you’re headed into someplace like, say, Anaheim, and they’ll chuckle and remark, “Going behind the Orange Curtain, eh?”

Well, this past weekend we braved the Orange Curtain and headed into Anaheim, off to see the Wizard. Wizard World, that is. And you know what? It was pretty great! Sunday was slow, but Friday evening was surprisingly busy, especially since the hall was open for the odd hours of 5 to 9 pm. This was obviously keyed to the idea of drawing people in after they were done with work, and it seems to have been a good decision. On our part, we weren’t going to complain when it allowed us to not have to get up at the crack of dawn to head down there. Dawn and I got to be guests of the convention, along with several other independent artists, so it was a wonderful opportunity to combine a free exhibit space with a big crowd. A few highlights:

– Meeting Ethan Nicolle, the co-creator and artist of Axe Cop. He was unfortunately fighting a bad cold, but Dawn and I really appreciated that he pushed through it and made it out to the convention, even if it was rough for him to talk too much.

– Had a great talk with James Andrew Clark, the writer of The Guns of Shadow Valley. I haven’t really written about this webcomic before and I really should get around to it, because it’s extremely well done (hey, it was even nominated for an Eisner!). The artist has been busy with a paid gig lately that put them into almost-hiatus, but James was hopeful that they’d be back in the saddle within the next couple of months. TGoSV is another story deftly mixing Western sensibilities and the supernatural, and if you read my Next Town Over review you know how I feel about those.

– Familiar at all with the cartoon Adventure Time? Well, regardless, your humble proprietors both just love the show, and on Saturday we happened to be sitting next to both the former lead character designer and the current one: Phil Rynda and Andy Ristaino. They did a combined Finn and Jake sketch for us and took time out for a group photo as well.

I talked with many other great, talented folk, such as Wes Huffor, Lance Sawyer, James “Riot” Godfrey, and Kirk Kushin (and others I’m surely and sadly forgetting), but I need to give special consideration to one man that I had decided to seek out before the convention had even started…

Nat Gertler may not be a name you’re familiar with, but if you’re a budding writer of comics, then I’m here to say you should be. In an industry of Gaimans and Bendises and Ellises and Moores and Willinghams and all those other famous scribes, Gertler is a comics writer who took the time and effort to put together something of unique (and so far as I know, somewhat unsung) value. Remember back when I was giving my insights into my scripting process and said how I grasped around for an embarrassingly long time until I finally realized comic scripts had no set format? If I’d just known about this damn book, it would have told me that flat out right in Nat Gertler’s introduction:

I can’t emphasize enough how great this book is, even if you’ve already figured out “the secret”. You get an inside look at how over half a dozen greats of the business work their magic, and each example is both wildly different and completely legitimate as a process, from Gaiman’s detailed, almost poetic panel-by-panel breakdowns to Jeff Smith’s “script” which is presented as a rough drawn comic in itself. The important thing here is it will open your eyes to all the different ways the pros work, and somewhere in their styles (or between them) you’re going to find something that works for you.

Also, as evidenced by his gift to me of an old issue of his comic “The Factor”, Gertler is no slouch as a writer, himself. But his work in getting all this together and published must have been Herculean, and I think well worth the effort. Panel One is available for purchase on Amazon.com, and as I had him sign my copy and gushed my appreciation to him personally, he grinned and pulled out something now out-of-print that I didn’t know existed: the sequel, Panel Two. It wasn’t a planned purchase, but I had to buy it. Nat (may I call him Nat?) is a guy I can tell who’s not just interested in writing comics, but in the process of writing them, and in helping new folks wrap their brains around the whole wonderful mess.

Plus, he signed Panel Two with the dedication, “To help Clint write MORE great comics!” The man knows how to make friends — or at least make a relative newbie feel good. If he happens to be the man behind the curtain, well, I’m not going to ignore him: he’s handing out brains, hearts, and courage, and I’m glad to have gotten the chance to shake his hand.

So here Dawn and I are, having tucked away one convention last week, only to be moving on to the next starting this Friday. This plus being present and accounted for at our day jobs, and also making the decision to keep the comic rolling along. I guess you could see it as being “in training” for the future, where we’ll hopefully be able to expand our number of appearances without becoming sleepless zombies. Okay, perhaps that might be a selling point, but I’m not sure I could keep proper track of the cashbox if all I’m doing is hungering for brains.

Next up is Wizard World Anaheim, where Dawn and I are enjoying our first ever status as invited guests (scroll down and you’ll find our bios!). We also have some Disneyland passes left over from a family outing, and as the Anaheim Convention Center is right next to the Magic Kingdom, this should all work out grandly provided we can keep our energy going. I hope to see at least some of you there, since talking to fans is definitely one thing that keeps me peppy!

With that said, time to talk about last Saturday and the one-day Expo held by Long Beach Comic-Con. You can vidi a nice recap from the attendee/press side of things by our friend Amy Ratcliffe on her blog here. One thing she points out which I do believe bears repeating is that more still could be done to separate the brands of the Expo and the main show in October. The LBCC website, for example, still was tending to mingle the two in a confusing manner, and I’ve had difficulty explaining to friends that there are separate shows, especially when most conventions remain once  a year events.

Until and unless it’s all sorted out, I think I’ll just call this Expo “Junior”, which was actually my off-the-cuff suggestion for a Twitter hashtag that the organizers approved and ran with this year after asking for fan input (#LBJr, to be precise).

I like Junior. Actually Dawn and I like the Long Beach cons in general, seeing as how we sort of grew up with them. LBCC ’09 was the first one, and also our first time ever exhibiting. LBCC ’10 was our first time ever hosting a panel, and Martha, Phil, Mike, and the rest of the crew have treated us exceptionally well on every outing despite us being, not to mince words, untested nobodies in the comics business. I just can’t imagine how all this would have gone had, for instance, our first con been that awful mess in Pasadena instead. If it weren’t for having LBCC ’09 and the first “Junior” under our belts by then, we might have been very disheartened.

The first Junior last year was an amazing thing, a small, intimate room that nonetheless had people like Stan Sakai, Tim Bradstreet and Mike Mignola manning tables. I think it was something like $10 for an attendee to get in. Alas, I suppose I was rather shy myself since I hardly took advantage of the rare opportunity to get some quality face time with these guys (Bradstreet being the exception). On our end, we had limited offerings beyond Dawn’s art prints and Bits of Nothing comics. I had a stack of postcards to hand out in hopes of getting people to the Zombie Ranch website, but hadn’t even finished the arc that would become our first print issue yet, nor did we have a Zombie Ranch-specific banner to catch the eye. So from that perspective, I think we’ve made some improvements in the last year.

The above picture was taken by head LBCC honcho Martha Donato herself, towards the end of the day, and stands uniquely as one of the only photos I can remember where I showed my teeth in a smile and didn’t end up looking either completely dorky or completely psychotic (or both). So kudos to the photography gods for that. We ended up selling a decent amount of Zombie Ranch #1 throughout the day, including a pair of copies to the organizers of the San Diego Zombie Walk, who confessed to being fans! I also attended the Webcomics Advocates panel, where I ended up talking almost as much as the gents running the show (Phil Vecchio and Brendan Creecy of Brax the Alien Rocker) and their guest of the day, Patrick Scullin of Super Siblings. Fortunately, they appreciated the input, although I was a little sad to see how few questions there were at the end despite all the people in the audience. Did we cover everything someone just starting out would want to know? I sincerely doubt it.

From my remembrance Junior had no panels last year, so this was a new feature, although having only had time to attend the one I can’t tell you how the experiment went overall. What I did appreciate was the decision to keep Junior in the same room as last year, a room just big enough to avoid being smothering at the height of the crowds, while still small enough so that it never felt abandoned — and this despite part of it being cordoned off to film The Guild.

My perspective? We still sell more comics than I ever expect to, and with every convention it seems like more and more people recognize us, or recognize our faces… or as a last resort, recognize our banners. Dawn and I are continuing to experiment and progress, in much the same way LBCC has been doing the same, and hopefully for the better.

I might be biased, though. One of my friends scooted up to me about halfway through the day and excitedly showed me the official flyer for the October con, and I confess, we’re still a bit giddy over it.

Last year we just sat next to Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti — this year, at least for one brief shining flier, we’re billed along with them as “awesome guests”.

I’m gonna give one of these to my mom, I think. She can stick it on the fridge, as prima facie evidence her son and daughter-in-law are awesome.

As I’ve touched on before in my discussions here of Rango and Deadlands, the Old West (and its derivatives thereof) is a place that lends itself easily to the power of myth; a place where the reality of those crazy tales told ’round a campfire on the dark prairie doesn’t seem too far out of the question. When I commented in response to a friend’s review of The Missing (great film, by the way!), I expressed the notion thusly:

“The Old West is such a ripe setting for horror themes, because of that tug of war between spiritual and mundane, civilization and savagery. It’s a borderland. It’s a Crossroads. And the Crossroads is where the ghosts dwell.”

But we don’t have to necessarily be talking straight-up horror so much as the injection of the fantastic, of characters and happenings beyond the norm. If you’re familiar with the old series The Twilight Zone you’ll know that not every show was based around something spooky or tragic, but it was always at least that subtle left turn from the “ordinary” world. Again, the concept is right there in the title, because what is twilight if not the crossroads between night and day? (well, there’s that other connotation of twilight in the last few years, but we won’t talk of that)

This is why the particular genre known as the Weird West  is such fertile ground for storytelling. And today, I’d like to bring up a fine fresh example I recently stumbled across, when I found myself in the Next Town Over.

Next Town Over is written and drawn by one Erin Mehlos, who was nominated for an Eisner award back in 2005 and, if her current work is any indication, has only gotten better since then. The art is gorgeous, with a unique style meshing some of the best parts of American and Japanese comics/animation, lending itself equally well to subtle expressions of face and manner and not-so-subtle expressions of action and violence.

But I’m a writer. Art in a comic by itself might catch my eye, but it won’t hold my attention in the long run; in fact, there’s quite professional comics I’ve put aside in disgust when I felt the art was going out of control and smothering the story trying to be told. I don’t mean by this that there have to be a lot of words (or even words at all), but if there’s a lot of flash that’s not helping the substance, I grow restless. Comics ain’t just about pretty pictures.

Look at Next Town Over, and you’re going to see a lot of pretty, not just in the panels themselves but in the way those panels are arranged and framed. The crucial part is, the pretty serves a purpose. It draws attention, but not in a way I ever felt was working against the grain, and oftentimes in ways that actually accentuate the content. Close-ups of facial expressions are framed in oval filigree, the way you might have seen old photos displayed on your grandparents’ mantel. Right at the beginning, a  phoenix-like rebirth in fire fades into red clouds overhanging a lone rider, in a page that also takes wonderful advantage of the need to scroll down when you’re viewing it online.

Even given the short archive so far, the elements of fire and time have already emerged as major themes of the comic. I suppose the abundance of gear imagery might just be a retrofuturist affectation (yes, I’m picky about using the term “steampunk”, and if you must know why, you can read here), but whether or not it was Erin’s intention, it keeps me thinking of clockwork and the inevitable tick of time that represents. Her use of fire plays into the time element, as there are panels where the past quite literally is burning away the present in a sudden heat of memory; as if the events of now were only a fragile overlay of what’s gone before. It also conveys a rage in the protagonist’s soul that no amount of inner monologuing could have equaled. Matter of fact, I do believe I mentioned before that I don’t hold much with stoic Western characters who nonetheless feel some need to air all their inner thoughts to us. Erin shows us all we need to know (for now) about the relationship between her “black hat” and “white hat” through their interactions and some tantalizingly ingenious visuals.

It’s really great stuff, and this before the comic is even much past Chapter 1, with a lot of mystery still to be resolved (hopefully, like the best ongoing stories, many of the answers will provoke still further questions). I can only hope that we’ll be this good after a few more years under our belts, but for now I’ll just put praise where praise is most definitely due, and tell y’all to go give Next Town Over a read. Just try not to judge our own humble efforts too harshly in comparison 🙂

Oh, and speaking of those humble efforts, we have some exciting news which we’ll be announcing in the next couple of weeks! In the meantime, though, if you’re around the Long Beach area this Saturday, come by and see us at the one day Comic Expo. Or if you’re around Anaheim the following week, we’ll be there for all three days of Wizard World. Hope to see some of you there, and if not, then we’ll “see” you next Wednesday!

Can’t really call it an Age of Wonder, we weren’t there that long (and I didn’t spy a single Skeksis), but Dawn and I have concluded our “business trip” up to WonderCon this past weekend. On  the minus side, we spent more time driving than actually being out on the convention floor. On the plus side, the drive itself was quite nice, and a jaunt down memory lane for yours truly as I recalled family roadtrips of my childhood. I’ve always loved the beaches and hills of Central California, and a tour up Highway 101 offers satisfying amounts of both. The Golden State Freeway between Los Angeles and San Francisco is a barren wasteland by comparison, which my sainted mother says is in part because its status as a major route is much more recent, only opening in its current state in 1972. In fact, it’s a matter of record that facilities were so few and far between for a time that cars would routinely run out of gas due to a lack of fill stations.

On to the convention itself… much more crowded than we had anticipated! This wasn’t a huge problem, since we were there only to attend and observe and figure out if we might want to try to exhibit in the future, but one of my friends who has attended in previous years said that it was noticeably more crowded, to the point he had troubles getting into a film presentation panel he was supposed to report on. He expects that from San Diego, but the sudden upsurge in population (and thus, lines) at WonderCon blindsided him.

My existing theory on this is that everyone who missed the boat for getting their San Diego passes on Feb. 9th opted to go to WonderCon instead. But on the other hand, don’t get me wrong… we were there on what would traditionally be the busiest day (Saturday) and they still had passes for sale on site and panels you could slip into without worrying about capacity limits. So there was still a decent measure of “small convention” feel to it despite the jostling on the exhibit floor. I mean, to be fair, the exhibit floor itself was far, far smaller than the space that SDCC takes up, to the point where I was able to burn through it in a single day, even though I stopped to chat with people several times and took time out for lunch.

Oh, lunch. Lunch was the sole downer of the day. Maybe I’ve just gotten used to being treated fairly well by nearby establishments during conventions (or at least as professionally as any other patron), but the Chevy’s restaurant across from the Moscone Center has earned a special place in Hell. We were seated almost immediately, led out to the patio (note we did not request this… important later…) to our table where we settled in to check out the menus and munch on the complimentary tortilla chips…

And that’s where the trouble began. First, 20 minutes of salty chip munching went by before someone took our drink orders. Then we were asked if we were paying by cash or credit… we weren’t sure why a sit-down restaurant was asking that up front, but supposed maybe they wanted to know if we wanted to open a tab for cocktails, so told them no, no alcohol today, and chose the cash option since we figured it would be quicker and more convenient while they were busy. So at that point, the waitress took the food orders…

And another half hour passed before we saw her again. When we did, she slapped one of those faux leather containers for the check down in front of us. I blinked, figuring she had gotten her tables mixed up.

“Excuse me, we haven’t gotten our food yet.”

Rather than an oopsie, I sat there dumbfounded as she proceeded to explain to me that they have such problems with convention people on the patio running off without paying that when they want to pay cash, they have to pay ahead of time.

This was the first time this policy had been articulated to us. Remember, we did not ask to be seated on the patio, and thought cash was just going to be a convenient option (if we’d chosen credit, we might have found out sooner as they would have demanded to hold the card up front until we were done). Perhaps worst of all, this meant that after nearly an hour of waiting, they hadn’t even started on our food yet.

At that point, I asked them to please tally up our sodas and iced teas, put down enough money for that, and we left. But for me it wasn’t just the slowness of service and lack of communication, I had a problem with the whole policy, and I told the manager as much when she came out to ask if everything was okay. No. No, it was not okay. It was, frankly, incredibly insulting and unwelcoming, especially since it was made clear that this was something only being applied because we were obvious convention attendees. Perhaps I’m sheltered, but in my 37 years on this Earth I have never run into any other restaurant of the sit-down, here’s-your-menu wait staffed variety that requires payment up front. Even on their busiest occasions. And to be selective about it? I mean, can you imagine a restaurant enforcing a policy like that on their black patrons, because their experiences say something negative about them? They’d be sued out of their eyeballs.

I’m not going to claim convention attendees never skip out on checks, but I’m sure there’s an amount of non-attendees who do the same. Restaurants tend to account for this, the same way retail stores account for the fact that a certain amount of shoplifting will occur. Christ on a cracker, Dick’s Last Resort down in San Diego is an intentionally rude place and even they trust their patrons (including convention patrons) enough to bring the check at the end. If I’m expected to pay up front, I might as well hit the Baja Fresh or McDonald’s and at least get it quick.

But hey, if you’re gonna do it, at least tell your customers up front. That way they can find somewhere more decent to eat before you waste an hour or more of their time.

So anyhow, that bad experience almost shot my Day of Wonder all to hell, or at least threatened to reduce my wondering to “What the hell?!”, but fortunately it was a rewarding experience otherwise. I hit up a couple of good panels and we bought good things from people we knew, and people we didn’t know. In particular, I sought out Daniel M. Davis of Steam Crow and bought his beautiful Monster Commute book which I had lacked the cash for when we first met him at DesignerCon last year. Also, when we were at SDCC ’10 I’d picked up a freebie table offering called Miserable Dastards which I found quite entertaining, but never got around to the booth it came from… at WonderCon, not only did I stumble across the booth, but I found writer Richard A. Hamilton present and accounted for and was able to both buy his volume 1 collection and tell him how much I had enjoyed the first issue. Then there was our great chat with Ryan Reiter, who was down promoting his second annual ZomBCon and was very excited when we told him about Zombie Ranch, or at least excited enough to trade a copy of the comic for a t-shirt and poster. I don’t think we’d actually be able to make it up there this year, but for anyone in the Seattle area it seems like a brain-munching good time. Last year Bruce Campbell even held a special ceremony for zombies wanting to renew their wedding vows, which Dawn and I could only watch jealously from afar.

And like I said, I did manage to burn through the whole floor in one day. At San Diego I can’t accomplish that in five days. I’m sure I missed some things and missed some shoutouts (Rebecca Hicks, Travis Hanson, and Mark Dos Santos were all usual suspects in attendance). I know I missed out on seeing all but a couple members of the following group, to where I didn’t even realize they were a group until I saw the pictures today:

Yep, it’s a gender reversed JLA, and the men are in on the act as well as the ladies. A word of warning should you follow the link to the bigger picture, Power Boy shares his canonical counterpart’s inclination to strain against the fabric of the suit, just in a different area. But hey, I guess if comic artists can show nipples and ‘toe poking through on the girls, it’s only fair…

See you next week, as our tale of the Zombie Ranch continues!

If I haven’t outed myself as an RPG nerd in my writings yet, well, here we go with no more room for wrigglin’. I’m not just talking the computer RPGs (though I do like those), I’m talking the old school pen & paper, grab the Cheetos & Mountain Dew and hang out in the parents’ basement style of roleplaying games. Dungeons & Dragons, Vampire: The Masquerade, Call of Cthulhu… I’ve played ’em all, and more besides. Heck, one of the less well known offerings is responsible for my first ever professional writing credit.

Why do I bring this up? Well, Zombie Ranch owes many debts of inspiration, and one of them is to an imaginative bit of genre mashing that debuted as an award winning RPG way back in 1996. Deadlands.

Now sadly, for all the praise I’m about to lavish on this game, I’ll have to admit I never actually have had the chance to play it. This phenomenon isn’t uncommon amongst pen & paper gamers–we’ll see something intriguing, buy the book, read and love it–but then, for one reason or another, it just never gels into a game session, much less a campaign. Sometimes it’s just a matter of not having enough other people that are interested. Sometimes it’s a matter of a setting you love, but a game system you never quite wrap your brain around. Deadlands may have been a little of column A and a little of column B for me and my friends. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a system that eschews the generic and helps enhance the experience of the genre being represented–I even wrote a whole Satellite Show entry on the subject–but despite the on-the-drawing-board awesomeness of having a game in an Old West setting where everyone playing has a poker hand and poker chips that help affect their characters’ fates, in reality it does make things a lot more complicated when you’re already juggling stat sheets, pencils and dice, and probably have a lot of the table taken up with a map and miniature figures as well. Certainly it’s not a system I’d spring on a first-time pen & paper gamer who is still trying to figure out the difference between the d8 and d10.

That’s enough about that, though, because even if you never play it and never intend to, the Deadlands book is worth buying just for the setting alone. It’s a fascinating, well done combination of retro-futurism with the Western and Horror genres, written by people who both know their history and know how to warp it. It’s a world, for instance, where the American Civil War never ended, because things somewhat literally went to Hell right in the middle of the Battle of Gettysburg, with the dead soldiers of both sides rising up to murder the living regardless of whether they wore the blue or the gray. Why? That’s a whole other story in itself, tying in to Native American legend and a proto-“Ghost Dance” movement, which, unlike in our world, actually worked–sadly, with a powerfully bad result.

I could go on and on, but the short version is that a lot of the Old West still happens as we know it, but it’s gotten a lot weirder and darker than even the tallest of the tall tales that might have been spun around a dark and lonely campfire on the prairie. There’s even a “steampunk” aspect on top of everything, though I hesitate to call it that because I think to do so does a disservice to the whole horribly eerie idea behind the mystery substance known as Ghost Rock that has enabled such strange new leaps in technology.

Now over the years the game has been re-released several times, including the obligatory d20 version. Should you buy those? Having not read them, I can’t tell you for sure since I don’t know how much of the setting material is preserved in them, and the setting is the goldmine for me. My original 1996 copy is still sitting in a prominent place on my gaming shelf, so I’m set, but if you see a copy on E-bay, for instance, I reckon you could do a lot worse than to pick it up.

As a final exciting development, I’ve learned that this year’s going to see a new series of comics set in the Deadlands world! The news came out of Emerald City Comic-Con earlier this month, and names like Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray (of Jonah Hex fame) are attached. Everything old is comin’ ’round new again, and they couldn’t have picked a richer property to mine for tales of the Weird West.

In this blog I’m partially going to tread onto Dawn’s turf, but hey, comics are a continual mix of words and pictures (even if sometimes you can toss words completely out of the mix, which is why comics writers are such an insecure bunch). She’s talked about writing before, and now I wanna talk about art.

Specifically, I wanted to talk about how important it is to keep a sense of distinction between your characters that an audience can instantly grasp. This isn’t just limited to comics, as this trope entry shows, but because comics often tend to abstract the human face and form, I think it becomes that much more vitally important.

Now, if you’re good enough and have enough time, you could not only create very distinctive faces but distinctive mannerisms for your whole cast, to the point where they would still be identifiable even in nude silhouette. Tracy Butler worked really hard at this with Lackadaisy,  and for the most part succeeded. But plenty of professional, well-regarded artists in comics have fallen prey to the “Only Six Faces” syndrome, whether that comes from complacency, need to meet deadlines, or both.

Does it make them bad comics artists? Not in my book… as long as I can tell who I’m looking at. That’s the key point. The audience should never have to spend any time figuring that out (with an exception of course for when identity confusion is an intentional plot point).

That’s where the “accessories” come in. An iconic costume. A unique hairstyle. An unusual body type. Maybe even a certain way of speaking. Anything and everything that you can scrounge up to eliminate confusion and keep the flow of story as intact and transparent as possible. And when you’ve made your primary choices, it’s important to always keep them in mind as your tale progresses.

For example, the Only Six Faces trope linked above singled out the second artist of The Walking Dead comic as having some troubles with this, which was unsurprising to me after I checked out a free issue (#8 I think?) and became totally lost on who was who as the narrative kept jumping from place to place. I believe I recall one particular instance where a blond woman is just getting out of a shower, but is a completely different blond woman than the one on a previous page. I did have the thought that maybe I just was lost for not having kept up with things for awhile, but still, it’s a monthly comic, right? And if “most of the women… are only identifiable by their hair and/or hats”, then you can see the immediate problem when one is stepping out of the shower and hasn’t bound up her signature ponytail yet.

Now think about Batman and Superman. In their superhero costumes, you’d never mistake them for one another–but take them out of the costumes and you’ve got two big, muscular, black haired, square-jawed dudes. Writers have even played with this down the decades by having Clark and Bruce pretend to be each other, the same way there’s not a few Archie comics where Betty and Veronica have done switcheroos by simple expedient of some dye and a hairstyle switch. South Park’s superhero spoof episode had Mysterion reveal his identity at the end by showing his face… the same face that 99% of the kids on South Park share.

The closer to each other your characters look, the more you have to work at the accessories. One thing that makes offerings like The Walking Dead comic more complex is not only the fact that everyone tends to be dressed and presented in a realistic fashion, but that the comic itself is in black and white. Can you imagine trying to read a Power Rangers comic in black and white? If you can manage it, color is quite the powerful accessory. Color allows you to have two girls with ponytails, one with light brown hair and one with blond hair. Maybe. But what if you end up having a scene in a poorly lit room, or a moonwashed moor? Now you need to change it up. Garishly distinctive costumes, but similar faces? Be cautious when zooming in to catch the glint in their eye.

A lot of iconic characters have a range of accessories accumulated–possibly just because they looked good, but also possibly because the artist was giving themselves some options. Superman’s signature forelock? Well, now you can switch between close-up headshots of him and Bruce Wayne conversing. Crystal of The Inhumans and Susan Storm having a cup of coffee in street clothes? You can bet Crystal’s still going to have those funky ties in her hair (it’s like Jack Kirby foresaw that someday Marvel would be releasing colorless versions of their comics in the “Essential” collections).

And when all else fails, there’s words. Let’s face it, these are all cheats in some form or other, quick and dirty ways to connect… but there ain’t nothing wrong with that if the alternative is loss of clarity. This is where, if you’re a writer, you can really help your artist… or if you’re both writer and artist, you can help yourself. If you’ve got two dark-haired white women in your comic with similar faces and bodies, and you’re showing a long shot of one emerging naked (or towel-wrapped) from a shower in some neutral area (perhaps a police station both work at?), this might be the time to shove in some words so we know we’re following Laura and not Audrey.

– A passing co-worker asks, “Shift over, Laura?”

– Laura has a thought bubble: “Man, I hope Audrey isn’t still sore about this morning.”

– A caption: “After a long day, Laura washes her body clean, but her mind remains troubled…”

Words can serve as an accessory even when all the visual options are exhausted. Whatever you do, just give me something to go on, and give it to me right away. Don’t keep me waiting and keep me guessing unless its supposed to be a mystery where gloved hands and shifty silhouettes are the order of the day.

You don’t have to be an incredible artist who crafts each character into their own multi-layered snowflake… just keep asking yourself, if you were reading for the first time, “Would I know who this is?” It’s even worth asking this from a pure writing perspective as well… if you’re doing an O.P. (off panel) word bubble, someone speaking that we can’t see, is it clear who’s speaking? For instance, in this week’s comic, I inserted a “ma’am” in Frank’s word bubble in the last panel. Did I need to? Maybe, maybe not, since I don’t think Frank and Rosa sound much alike… but for the sake of clarity, I figured it couldn’t hurt.

Before I sign off, I thought I’d leave you all with a venerable example of character clarity where the designs are much less complicated than Lackadaisy’s. I hadn’t even considered it much until I started thinking about all this, but it’s been staring us in the face for decades:

Oh, sure, snicker about how lazy and formulaic the animated adventures of the Mystery Machine crew may have been… but take a good look at these characters. Scooby obviously doesn’t need help, but the rest?

– Different hairstyles. Check

– Different colored hair. Check.

– Iconic outfits. Check.

– Distinctive color palettes on those outfits. Check.

– Differently shaped bodies. Check.

– Differently shaped faces. Check.

Even those very, very simply done faces have subtle differences. Shaggy has that big nose. Daphne has those upswept eyes. You will never, ever worry about mistaking one member of the Scooby Gang for another. Heck, they even all had a specific way that they ran.

The supporting cast? Yeah, a pretty interchangeable mix of shady butlers and matronly widows, but as far as the main kids went, well, you almost know what they’re about before they ever open their mouths, and you know they’re all about different things… except, of course, solving the mystery. Now that’s accessorizing.

I’m gonna get this out of the way right now, so there’s no suspense. Rango. Loved it, and not just because the title character has great taste in shirts. Kinda wanna have its little gecko babies.

Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration, not to mention scientifically impossible in a whole lot of ways… but there’s a lot of the impossible going on in this movie, and it washes over you with the frenetic energy of the best classic Warner Bros. cartoons while somehow still remaining grounded in the earthy sensibilities of the Western.

If that seems like a paradox, consider the trope of the vision quest and its place in the mythology of the American Southwest. The idea of wandering out in the desert to find yourself could be said to be old as Moses, but this is our modern incarnation, so powerful that it even draws the imaginations of those across the pond to wander among the Joshua Trees or write scenes of peyote-induced madness. If you have any doubts that Rango is going to be more than just a run-of-the-mill animated Spaghetti Western, they should be dust in the wind by the 5 minute mark, if not before. At least by the time the titular chameleon, shortly following an accident that leaves his city slicker self stranded on the desert highways, has a conversation about destiny with a partially tire-flattened armadillo channeling Don Quixote, you ought to figure there’s a bit of a head trip a-comin’. And I’m not even counting the brief Johnny-Depp-meets-Johnny-Depp moment prior to that. If you watch, you’ll understand.

Rango is at once intensely self-aware, and gleefully chaotic. The characters are fantastically realized from a cross-section of Old West stereotypes poured into dusty, craggy animal form, in some of the best anthropomorphic achievements I’ve had the pleasure to witness. When the black hat rattlesnake makes his way into town, and you notice in the midst of his literally venomous monologue that a discoloration above his mouth bespeaks a Lee Van Cleef style moustache? That ain’t an accident. If you think a plot about lack of water has certain resemblances to Chinatown, there are scenes that occur where the filmmakers tip their hats to you and cheerfully admit, “Yup”. And while you might not be surprised to hear the obligatory Clint Eastwood Man-With-No-Name makes an appearance, the details of how he does are at once mundane, sublime, and deeply bizarre.

Rango is funny, and exciting, and brilliantly animated, and has a great theme song, but what I love most about it is that it recognizes the mythic power behind the Western and the wide open spaces where it makes its home, a frontier not just of body but of mind and soul. The story might be a familiar one at its core, but the dedication to that story and the realization of it are to be praised.

And all of that done without feeling a need to release the movie in 3-D. Lord bless ya for coming along, Rango… you were a cool, trippy drink of agua for a thirsty soul.

There’s horror, and then there’s horror. Sometimes it’s the little things that bring the apocalypse home, as Douglas Adams knew when he wrote in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy about Arthur Dent trying to wrap his brain around the destruction of the entire Earth:

England no longer existed. He’d got that — somehow he’d got it. He tried again. America, he thought, has gone. He couldn’t grasp it. He decided to start smaller again. New York has gone. No reaction. He’d never seriously believed it existed anyway. The dollar, he thought, had sunk for ever. Slight tremor there. Every Bogart movie has been wiped, he said to himself, and that gave him a nasty knock. McDonalds, he thought. There is no longer any such thing as a McDonald’s hamburger. Arthur passed out. When he came round a second later he found he was sobbing for his mother.

Comical? Yes. But also a recognition that horror and loss can be as subjective in their own way as art. Shortly after starting this comic, I posted a blog detailing some previous concepts of zombie ranching I had run across, like the game Zombie Rancher, and I mentioned how their idea of people eating the zombies as a delicacy made me look elsewhere for wrangling motivation. While there’s a fantastic dose of irony in the idea of people consuming zombies, out of respect for those who came before I chose from the beginning to move in a different direction, subverting the assumption that the “greenies” were being gathered for food. Admittedly I may have been too subtle about it, since at least one review of the comic proclaimed they were being gathered for food, and I remember on our first convention outing that Dawn was repeatedly stating to passerby “No meat like aged meat!” until I had to ‘splain to her that might give people the wrong idea (writers are such a buzzkill for artists).

I’ve already said as much in my World FAQ a long time ago, but with this week’s comic, here it is at last out in the open. Zombies, whether they were once people, cattle, or prairie dogs, taste like utter crap… and the more I thought about that second part, the more I realized I’d created a rancher’s worst nightmare.

Hell, it even kind of gives me the willies. Dawn and I both like our steak, and the idea that the last one I had might suddenly end up being the last one I ever had? Oh, sure, it wouldn’t kill me to go without, and for you vegetarians out there you’d give a collective shrug, at best, but that’s when we get back to the subjective horror thing, and you think about the impact on people whose livelihood for as long as they can remember has revolved around cattle. Not just them, but generations before them. That’s pretty damn personal. That’s the kind of thing that might have you sobbing for your mother.

So yeah, civilization as we knew it went to hell, people died, people didn’t stay dead, and humanity pulled through only after some very, very bad years. But the crashing realization of a Texas without beef? Submitted for your approval, that for one Chuck W. Zane, that was horror, indeed.

Even a genius can be wrong. And I’m not even a genius. Case in point, Stephen Thor found my review of Gone Zombie from last week and proceeded to prove me to be the opposite of prophetic on the subject of never seeing Zombie Ranch mentioned in his blog.

Seems I underestimated the amount of referrals I was actually able to toss his way, at least enough to be noticeable on a log. Seems I also forgot that even if you don’t actually read any other zombie comics, that doesn’t prevent you from mentioning other zombie comics. You win this time, Thor…

Seriously, even in defeat that’s just cool to type. Who can be faulted for losing to a namesake of the favored son of All-Father Odin? On that subject, I’m really looking forwards to the Thor movie after the latest trailer. I always try not to get my expectations high to avoid disappointment, but… I can’t help it. It’s just too awesome. He fights THE DESTROYER! When it blows up that car with its eyebeams I had a Kirbygasm, even if there was no krackle to be seen.

I’m cautiously optimistic about the Captain America movie, as well. I do like the choice they made to keep it set in WWII, getting right to the roots of both Marvel Comics and Cap himself. WWII seems like the last war America ever had where the country as a whole still feels like we were unquestionably on the right side, doing the right thing. Steve Rogers is a good, honest believer in the American Dream, given the chance to have his physicality match his strength of heart. Despite all my cynicism, to this day a well-written Captain America lets me set aside all the irony and detachment and other bullcrap and just root for an ideal. Cap might be a blond white guy, but he has room in his heart for all races, colors, and creeds. He won’t stand for tyranny, whether from a foreign government or from his own (and I’m not talking “OMG they raised my taxes!”, but actual infringement of liberties). Based on that, his attitude in the Marvel Civil War was no real surprise, although the details of his actions were hit and miss for me.

Anyhow, Captain America is one of my favorite Marvel characters there is, and the continuation of his popularity into modern times makes me feel good. Because he’s a good guy, and represents America as the Good Guy, in that strong, by-example way where he doesn’t have to constantly keep ranting to everyone around him that he’s the greatest. John Wayne used to pop braggarts like that in the mouth.

Just sayin’.

It’s weird, but I suppose unsurprising, that you can browse the web for months and yet completely overlook something, even when it’s right up the alley of what you might be looking for. For example, while checking information for our visit to the upcoming WonderCon (no booth, just attending), I noticed an advertisement for something called Gone Zombie. Lo and behold, upon clicking the link I was presented with 80+ pages of a well illustrated, full color zombie webcomic that I swear I had never found reference to in any of my Googling up to that point.

That might just be my blindness more than anything, since I did put in “zombie webcomics” today and got a link on the first page of results, but then again maybe they only recently did some search optimization? I freely admit I don’t follow every single zombie webcomic out there, but I do at least like to be aware of my fellow travelers. This is more difficult than it might seem given the high startup (and shutdown) rates in the webcomic world, but with Gone Zombie I found a project that’s been updating since before Zombie Ranch even started, and has definitely not been abandoned. On the other hand, it’s not listed on TWC or any of the other usual suspects, so I don’t know how good they’ve been about getting the word out so far (his blog mentions they were part of the Zuda competition before Zuda stopped hosting most of their comics, but I admit to not having followed the Zuda much).

Therefore, for what it might be worth I’m going to play Good Samaritan and do my part here in directing the dozen or so of you wandering by this blog to give it a look. Stephen Thor (how cool is that name?) is a first-time author, but he’s crafted an engaging story so far and I’m enjoying his sense of pacing. Also, he’s gathered a team of very-much-not-first-timers around him to do the art and lettering side of things, and that really shows in the final product. These are folks who have worked for Marvel, DC, Boom!, and there’s more than one of them on the team… ask Dawn how much more time she could devote to details if she had a professional inker, colorist, and letterer working with her and she’ll respond with a wistful sigh. But though I’m sure these guys aren’t all working as volunteers, the website has absolutely no ads and even the (very occasionally updated) blog is tucked away. That means there’s not much in the way of additional content once you’ve clicked your way through the storyline, but there’s also no filler or distractions, so it’s a very pure experience.

Speaking of the purity of the experience, in the one interview I found with Stephen Thor, he confesses that he reads absolutely no other zombie comics or webcomics, out of fear of his own work being influenced by them. That almost turned me off, seeing as sounded like a similar attitude to what Stephenie Meyer has been quoted on regarding her Twilight series and vampires; however, where SMeyer has never read Dracula, Stephen has at least seen (and loves) Night of the Living Dead and several other zombie and horror flicks, and has an intelligent grasp on what the genre is about. It’s just a shame that should I meet him at WonderCon, I most likely won’t be able to talk to him about my own comic on account of his phobia.

It also means I’ll probably never see a mention of Zombie Ranch in his blog, but hey, being a Good Samaritan is all about selflessness, right? Gone Zombie is a fine little comic, so if you haven’t found it already, go now and give it a read.

I’ve occasionally made mention of the other blog site I write on, I think most recently back just after Long Beach Comic-Con 2010 when I felt like I had so much to cover that I outsourced my review of The Walking Dead premiere over that way. Most of the time The Satellite Show remains the place where I talk about things I don’t feel are terribly related to Zombie Ranch, but on occasion there’s overlap. I’m a geek, and I like to talk about geek things. Sometimes I like to talk about those things in a place with much less of the PG-13ish limits I impose upon myself here. I can be quite the potty mouth when I get worked up. Heck, even when I’m not worked up.

Anyhow, if you don’t mind a little harsh language and are any sort of person who sells, or intends to sell their creator creations at a Comic-Con, or are just interested in that sort of thing in general, I highly encourage you to click on over and give my latest rant a read. The tl;dr version is that I think the “hard sell” approach has no business at a Comic Convention, and in fact commits murder/suicide on the whole atmosphere.

So how do you sell? You sell by having a nice, well organized, visible display area. You sell by having a selection of items to fit people’s budgets. Most of all, you sell by allowing people the freedom to walk by you without a second glance.

Does that sound absolutely insane from a sales standpoint? Maybe. Dawn and I are still relative noobs at all this, but because of that I’m probably approaching things from the mindset of myself as an attendee. I like to be able to browse without being hassled, especially at a place where I feel like I should be having fun, finding fun things, and talking to fun people. Getting the feeling from someone like I shouldn’t be breathing their air, much less looking at their stuff unless I buy something is a complete buzzkill. Also, there’s a lot of different kinds of comics out there, particularly nowadays in this brave new world of webcomics and Print-On-Demand that enable independent efforts on a scale previously undreamt of. Am I interested in all of them? No. And so, given that, isn’t it patently unfair to expect that everyone passing by will be interested in mine? Sure, there’s a case to be made for “Try it, you might like it”, but that makes comics seem uncomfortably close to your mom telling you to eat your broccoli.

There are people who will walk by you without a glance. There are people who will walk by you with a glance. There are people who will, in fact, try your broccoli (for example, paging through your sample comic… you do have a sample comic out, right?) and then decide they don’t like its taste. I think it’s important, if not crucial, not to take any of these outcomes personally. I strive for that “no obligation” feel, even if it’s a slow day. Maybe even especially if it’s a slow day, because those are the times I’m happy for visitors who might want to just indulge in some geek chat to pass the time.

How well does the no hassle approach work? Well, let’s put it this way: Zombie Ranch is a webcomic, where every last page is available for free, at any time, to anyone with a browser and an Internet connection. I tell this to people right up front if they’re giving signals of interest: “We’ve been publishing as a weekly webcomic for over a year, but we also have our first print issue there for $5 if you’re interested. If not, we’re online… feel free to grab a postcard with our URL and come check us out there…”

I think that’s a nice way to let them know that if they’re just browsing, that’s a-okay by me. Really, all I ever expected was to pass out those postcards, but we’ve been selling a fair amount of the print comics. Not so much through the online channels, but in person, people I’ve never met before end up buying… sometimes right away, sometimes later on in the day, or the next day. Maybe even the next convention. Are they liking the taste of the broccoli that is Zombie Ranch? Or are they returning because they had the freedom to walk away without any awkward feelings? Or both?

Let’s face it, charging even $3.99 for a comic on a store shelf when you’re a self-published relative unknown is dicey at best. But if you get to meet the creators personally and have a good vibe off of them, well, hell, I know I’ve bought stuff at conventions for that reason. But that good vibe is important… if you seem presumptive of someone’s money, or desperate for it, I think people pick up on that, and that’s when things can get uncomfortable.

Or maybe I’m completely misreading the whole thing. But hey, people are buying a $5 print issue or even a $20 special edition, even knowing they could get it all for free online, and they’re doing so with a smile.

That’s gotta count for something.

Can you believe it? San Diego Comic-Con 2011 finally got its online badge registration up and running this last Saturday, and sold out within 12 hours of the opening bell. Not only that, but “up and running” was a severely relative term for those trying to get their passes, as apparently there was a lot of F5 refreshes happening due to capacity error screens. Not only that, but some days were being mistakenly reported as sold out that then would be available again on a reload.

The third-party professional registration service Comic-Con contracted (after two failed tries doing things themselves) managed to get everything sold, but not smoothly. Apparently the demand and load on their servers was still “several orders of magnitude higher” than their worst-case estimate… which makes me think their case planners did a rather poor job.

Not to say I would have done better… I figured demand would definitely be higher than last time around, but if you’d bet me on everything selling out in less than a day, I probably still would’ve bet against you. Lots of people were caught by surprise for Comic-Con 2010 when the four day passes were gone in the first few months after registration started, but that was still a few months (and the one day passes were still available a lot longer after that). This year, admittedly, there were so many problems that a registration that was supposed to start by September didn’t happen until now, but still, going from a few months after the opening bell to a few hours? That’s something I’m not sure anyone predicted. It’s a game changer event, and I’m going to be really curious to see what policies CCI is going to try to put in action for 2012. Will they stop allowing people to pre-register for next year while this year’s event is in progress? Because I’m quite certain that’s going to be the plan for every attendee that got in, on the first day they can, and in that case they might have to shut it down before Sunday even comes about or the entire convention could be sold out before online registration even occurs. Hey, after Saturday, I’m willing to see that as not just possible, but inevitable.

Dawn and I were above all the fray due to our returning professional status, but we have friends and associates who weren’t so lucky and can only attend for a few days, or possibly not at all. Then again, Comic-Con is such a big event that there’s plenty to do without setting foot in the exhibit hall, so it’s not a total disaster for those that already have reservations for the whole time. My condolences if any of you reading this missed out. Here we were being disappointed about not getting a Small Press Booth, but now I’m counting myself lucky that we’re able to attend at all!

On a much humbler convention front, we brought Zombie Ranch to the 1^st ever Inland Empire Comics Expo this past Sunday, and for a tiny inaugural show with no big name draws I have to say it went very well, especially considering it was up against the Big Game (believe it or not, using the “S” word is restricted by the NFL to the point they sue people over it if they’re not authorized sponsors). Now to be honest, it did seem to get empty of both attendees and exhibitors around the time of kick-off (which I doubt was entirely coincidental), but our time spent there was quite worthwhile. I don’t know how well the Expo did as a whole, but we got to meet several enthusiastic new folks and introduce them to the Ranch, which is the bottom line for Dawn and myself. I still really love being behind the table at these things and getting to blather on about my concepts and answer all the confused, yet intrigued questions like “What do they feed the zombies?” or “What’s the floating robot thing?”

Alas, our scale model Cambot has finally given in to the wear and tear of several other convention visits. We turned him over to his original builder to see if he can be salvaged and returned to working order, so feel free to send your positive thoughts that way, and perhaps his little LED light may yet glow anew.

This week’s comic was hopefully worth the wait for you faithful readers. No dialog from me, but my oh my was there a lot of work regardless.

That probably doesn’t make much sense, since you’d think all the burden of work in a wordless page would be on the artist. And truth to tell, I’ve seen some comic scripts where what’s given to the artist is something along the lines of “Captain Cosmos and Lieutenant Walrus approach a spaceship”, but if I gave something like that to Dawn she’d probably want to murder me in my sleep… no, no that’s not right… she’d probably want to murder me while I was wide awake and could fully experience her ire. Not right away, perhaps, but certainly if she made her best guess at what ‘a spaceship’ represents, spending hours on drawing it, only to have me tell her she’d gotten my vision ALL WRONG.

So as a comics writer, I think you have two options when dealing with your artist on details: Get specific, or be ready to accept that what they come up with may be wildly different than what was in your head. How specific? Well hell, folks, Dawn and I once discovered that we had an entirely different idea of what a “tank top” was. For her, a tank top was a spaghetti-strapped little number only women wear. For me, a tank top and an A-shirt (or in common American slang parlance, a “wifebeater”) were interchangeable terms. As you can imagine, my discussion with her on what Uncle Chuck should be wearing became much more complicated than I’d imagined.

Therefore, despite having written up several paragraphs on how the Zane’s Ranch House should appear, I spent several more days finding reference images, and trying to piece them together with my meager Photoshop skills into something approaching that whole “writer’s vision” thing that she could then work from. These are probably the times where the people who both draw and write their comics as a solo act have it the easiest. Then again, they still have to try to live up to their own imaginations, so maybe they also have it the hardest.

I still do remember talking to an artist of Fables at Comic-Con and asking them how Bill Willingham communicated what he wanted. Well, apparently Willingham is quite the artist in his own right and just draws it all for the artists to… re-draw? I don’t quite know how that works, but that was the process. I do know that when I asked what the options were for someone without drawing skills he told me “Learn to draw”.

I was annoyed by the answer then, but looking back on it now… hmm, no, still annoyed. Can’t even truthfully say the guy meant well, with how it was said. Not one of my more positive convention experiences, and also such a disingenuous answer given how many comics out there are produced with only the barest hints given of what should be drawn. Again, though, I figure the flip side of that is the writer looks at the end result, finds it different than what he imagined, and just shrugs and cashes his paycheck. On the other end of the scale, Alan Moore is no visual arts virtuoso, but is (in)famous for his scripts spelling out minute details of character, setting, and how things should be meaningfully arranged from panel to panel.

I’m somewhere in between, I suppose, gravitating towards one end of the scale or the other as the visual importance of a given comic strikes me. And then every so often, even though I still haven’t learned to draw, I’ll break out the Photoshop and do my best to pretend like I can. I wanted this one to be something special, especially after we made you all wait a week to find out why Rosa was saying “Wow”. I hope at least some of you agree with her.