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iesorno · 4 years

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We spoke to Adam a little while ago about his influences and inspirations and found his answers intriguing, so we decided to dive in and dig a bit deeper. We just kept on going with it all until we ended up with a mammoth interview going into every corner of his mind, from practice and accessing his creativity, to grafting to make a living outside of the norms of the mainstream.

I think it’s a fascinating look into the practice, experiences and the will to succeed that powers Adam, as well as a window into the wider world of underground creators.

WARNING – GORE and some SEX

You can find Adam here

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ZL – Hi Adam! Thanx for agreeing to this interview, hope you enjoy it.

Let’s get introductions out of the way. For anyone that doesn’t know, can you tell us your name, where you grew up and where you currently live?

AY – My name is Mr. Adam Yeater. I grew up a swamp rat in Florida and traveled around a lot. I finally settled down in Arizona as a desert rat. I went from one Florida to another.

ZL – For a little bit more background. You clearly enjoy underground and mini comix, so how did you first find out about them and what were you interested in before you started reading them?

AY – I discovered zines through the early Death/Grind Metal scene in the 90s. There was no internet so everything was done via snail mail. I used to get so much great printed matter. Demo tapes, fliers for bands, albums and review zines. I eventually started my own zine called Subliminal Message. We lived in Ohio in a shit hole little town. Trying to get high, fighting, reading comic books, listening to Metal, Punk Rock, Hardcore Rap and skateboarding.

I was a very industrious broke ass 14 year old kid. I found a way to get some of the mainstream metal record companies to send me promo stuff for their bands for review. I was getting stacks of stuff in the mail. The record companies were mailing backstage passes to me! My mom thought I was running a mail scam.

I once did a phone interview with Chris Barnes when he was in Cannibal Corpse. Chris called for an interview and my mom picked up the phone. He was like “Are you a fucking kid? Holy shit! I usually do interviews with old dudes?” We talked for an hour and half about Metallica selling out. It was amazing. I idolized these weirdos and was getting to just hang out with them.

I did an interview with Cro-Mags right when the original singer got out of prison. I did an interview with Entombed for my high school newspaper! I even interviewed the Goo Goo Dolls when they were on Metalblade Records just for the hell of it. Those metal bands were my heroes. They treated me as an equal and I was this punk kid. They all encouraged me to keep at it. I was getting first hand knowledge of trying to make a living as a creative in American society from them. The good and bad.

ZL – What did it feel like the first time you ever spoke to one of your heroes? It must have felt pretty excellent, right?

AY – It was awesome talking to those bands, it was a real rush. I would get so nervous. I got to hang with some of the bands before and after the shows. All these dudes just embraced me as one of them. I am super tall, so I looked a lot older than I was. I was also a big nerd for the metal scene so I was turning them onto all this other new stuff I was getting. I think they saw me as an oddity. Then we moved to Tucson where there was no metal scene.

ZL – Is that why you stopped making your zine then, moving to Tucson?

AY – Yeah, moving from Ohio to Arizona. The scene was pretty lame in AZ. No bands would come through Tucson at the time. So I ditched the ‘zine and started a Grindcore band with some friends. We did pretty well for a local death metal act. We played shows with Napalm Death and smoked a ton of weed with Sadistic Intent, that was cool.

Lots of drugs and drama, bandmates stealing from each other. . . even more drugs. It was a very fucked up time in my life that I am happy to have survived.

ZL – At what point did you get back into zines and start to think that self-publishing comics was something you could do or that you were good at and wanted to do more with, to just keep going and going and see how far you could take it?

AY – After the band and metal zine I started printing my own mini comics and comic books. I really got into self publishing and art because I had nothing else really. My last “legit” job was as a janitor before I decided to do art and publish full time. I figured I would rather starve as an artist than starve scrubbing shit off toilets. Art is the only thing I have ever been really good at. So I just keep doing it.

ZL – Circling back to get a bit more from your background for a minute, what first turned you into a comic reader and from there, did you move to be a collector or fan, if that distinction makes sense!! And where in all of that did you start making your own comics?

AY- I was into comics a lot when I was young as a collector and fan before I moved into extreme music. I was keeping up with the medium but was focused on the death metal band I was in.

After the band. I was doing paintings and fine art for quite a while. I had also done comics on the side but my fine art was doing well. Then the housing market crashed and nobody was buying art for foreclosed homes.

Luckily I had been doing an extreme comic strip in the metal ‘zines and in the mini comics I was doing. I saw that a local comic convention had started. So I printed them all up and booked a table. I sold out of my first printing and a bunch of art. That is when One Last Day started.

ZL – How did that feel, selling out of books like that? I’m guessing it must have been quite a boost as you carried on and set up an online store! What was the convention like, if you remember at all, did you have a good time there chatting and meeting fans and creators? A lot of people talk about how much the community at a convention matters to them, was that important to you at the time?

AY – It was a real boost. From that little bit of seed money I have been able to keep the ball rolling and have kept printing comics ever since. The comics scene in Tucson in the early 90s was really small and bare bones. It was me and like 2 other indie guys actively printing their own comics. I have encouraged and fostered so many people to make their own comics since then. Many writers and artists from the Tucson scene are now in the mainstream and indie comics system.

The couple who started the Tucson Comic Con have been the best thing for our local comix and art scene. Rather than neglecting local and indie comics they embraced and promoted them. I was so lucky to be in a place where the local comic convention focused heavily on independent comic artists.

I see kids that I taught inking classes to that are now publishing their comics on Amazon. Kids that now give me their books and thank me for all the support and inspiration I gave them. It is humbling. Before the ‘rona I was leaving 1000s of mini comics all over town instead of fliers for the last 15 years. It has exposed people in this town and state to my art and a world of comic books they never knew existed.

ZL – Speaking of coronavirus, I’m wondering how much that has affected your income currently? Do you rely heavily on con sales or do you have a whole set of ways to get sales, which is a terrible way of asking that I’m really interested in how you generate sales for your work, what venues and sources and what sort of percentage of sales comes from them. Have you got a regular set of fans that buy everything, are you using email communications, just facebook?

AY – In today’s art and comics world every successful artist has to be a little bit Andy Worhol and a lot of P. T. Barnum. Otherwise nobody will give a shit about you. So I have a ton of different ways to move my stuff. The website is my main hub but I do small zine fests and shows whenever I can. I have been doing OK but had to switch gears during the crisis. My online sales picked up so that helped a lot. I also have new books coming out all this year. I think that helps too.

Comic conventions at one time were a really good source of income when I first started doing them. I was making great money. Every year it has become progressively less of a viable option for creators like me. The big comic shows are just pop culture festivals. The last few years a lot of the larger shows could care less about indie comics. Table prices and entry fees are way too high for a self publisher or upcoming creator to make any money. Especially out of state shows. Hotel, travel, etc. Because of this I was only doing smaller zine/comic shows and focusing on my online sales already. The virus was a great reason to really focus on my online presence.

ZL – I first saw your work through a facebook group, one of the indie comics groups that sort of specializes in small press superhero and space operas, and I was wondering whether you think those groups help the creators reach more readers, or whether they are all more community pages as in it’s all people that want to make comics and they’re all working to support their own bubbles? (Obviously I’m exaggerating a little, they often have horror and then there’s oddball work that pops up, but there do seem to be a lot of big boob bad girls and massive muscles in some kind of genre thing. )

AY- I look at social media differently than most. I talk shit about comics on it but I have never used it as a political soapbox or a place to talk about my “personal journey”. I post my art and comix. That is it. I speak through my art. I like to “post and ghost”. I feel I am a healthier person for it.

This year I have slowly been taking my art off all the platforms. They are not an unbiased purveyor of ideas. Like the original internet was intended for. Social media is making us all sick. Scientifically proven sick.

I have grown to hate the self imposed censorship imposed on social media by advertisers and cancel culture. We as artists should have the right to dictate our expression by taking risks. Without having to worry about some simp nerd in Silicon Valley shadow banning or blacklisting us.

These leeches profit heavily on ALL of us. Especially artists. They work to infringe on our rights and hinder our freedom to express. The platforms are privatizing our existence. Fakebook and the Twits are just digital emotional vampires.

They should be paying you a fee to use your content and sell it to their stupid advertisers. They make billions off you and you know what you get, a little dopamine for that “like”. Wow, sweet trade off. Not!!

We all need to stand up in some way as artists. Post fucked up art and weird shit all the time! I wanna see a sea of artistically drawn dicks and vaginas. Shitposts, and fucked up memes on my “news” feed. Random acts of artistic defiance. We need confrontational art more now than ever! I want to see original artwork that pushes against cultural dogmas and shitty societal norms.

Instead I see oceans of fan art and trash pop culture mashups. Useless e-rage and cat pics. Art without confrontation is just advertising at this point.

ZL – Now, that’s an interesting one, because there are two sides to the argument on this and I sort of flop wildly between the two without any great reason. I can see why social media is not going to allow seas of dicks – they are easy triggers to SEE, so they’re easy to switch off to maintain acceptability, it seems pointless to me, but is important to a lot of people, so… There’s also the issue of managing genuine freedom to express and people posting images of tentacles raping 6 year old girls and how you manage to monitor that, so it’s just EASIER not to try and figure it and blanket ban it all.

What I think calls bullshit on their motives for me is that they’ll censor that, but allow neo-nazi lies or channels where people openly spout homophobic, racist or sexist bile. There’s a stinking dichotomy there that calls a lie to their talk of community and keeping us safe from damaging content.

I certainly wouldn’t want to have to be the poor sod that sifted through all of this stuff to check it though!

Pippa Creme and the Pearl Necklace – Dexter Cockburn

Equally, with work like yours or – to call in someone else I follow who is always getting bumped from facebook – Dexter Cockburn – who does some great porn comics. I see these things as being completely ok and not deserving of banning, but seeing cape comics and how innately sexualised and soft porn like the women are made to look, that makes me feel very dubious, it seems wrong in that context, as it’s so pervasive and so unspoken and clandestine.

AY – Exactly. It is weird how the mainstream sexulizes it’s heroes. The guys look just as bad. It is a form of repressed erotica. I think it all looks so funny. Balloon shaped breasts or the massive man bulge. There is a big market for that stuff so more power to them.

It just seems erotica in comix is ok for some and not others. The censorship online is selective. Dexter is a comix friend of mine and a great example. The guidelines are so ambiguous and filled with jargon it becomes nonsense.

I totally get censorship for criminal reasons. That is a no brainer. What I saw was not that.

I saw the platforms actively destroy the online followings of some extreme horror artist’s I was following. Some of us had built large fan bases on Myspace and brought our fans over to FB with us. When FB started shutting accounts down it crushed a lot of those artist’s online communities and sales. A lot of artists had to start all new accounts with different names causing them to lose 1000s of followers. Some just gave up or stopped posting extreme art all together. They are still doing it to some of the Ero Goro artists from Japan. It is really fucked up.

ZL – That’s part of the curse and benefit of social media though, they give and then they take away when you’ve made them successful. I do wonder what we can do about that though, maybe they should migrate back to Myspace, maybe the whole retreat to mailing lists is the answer? I don’t know, we need community spaces but we need them to not go dark and end up being hiding places for crime or the dark web. What do you do about it, eh? Maybe you should start curating work into new mail lists and have link sites for different peoples’ interests!!

AY – I like that idea. I have always wanted to do a monthly brochure of underground creators. Like a double sided mailer. I might do one for the Smalll Press Express to hand out at shows. Getting the word out is why I do the YouTube channel. Nobody is shedding light on the best part of comics. The odd, voiceless, strange and marginalized. I think anything that promotes the underground scene and unites indy comic artists is good. I feel every little thing helps. We are all in this sinking ship together. The mainstream comics people keep poking holes in the boat. The indy creators have to keep bailing it out.

ZL – Moving on from that unanswerable conundrum… Is community important to you and comics? Is publishing and buying and communicating with other creators a way of building a place in the wider world for the kinds of things that you enjoy and the kind of things you want to make?

AY – What community. The comics community?

It just saddens me so much lately. The internet and social media had so much potential to dissolve physical, cultural and social boundaries to our communication around the world.

Instead most people have developed the attention span of a gnat. I doubt anyone will actually read all this. So I am just gonna lay it all out. How I see it as an outsider looking in.

There is a massive world of art and comics that is ignored in the west. It is where I exist as a creative. I work with toy making friends in South Korea and send comix pages to Artizines in Spain. Send instant messages to slap sticker artists in Japan. All in a few seconds!! This used to take weeks, even months via phone and mail. Many here just take this shit for granted.

I had a “stick poke” tattooist from Taiwan ask if she could use one of my mini comic images in her little shop. How sick is that!! I live for that!!

I have worked with 100s of the most creative and amazing artists from all over the world. I have had enough love and inspiration from the global art community to last me two life times!!

The American comics community is a weird story. My books sell well. My fans are awesome. First time readers always come back. I do really well at every comic convention I have ever done, even small ones. I have printed, sold or given away thousands of my mini-comics, floppies and magazines. All over this crazy earth.

Somehow I have largely existed as an outsider in Western comics. Other than a few supportive cats in the southwest comics scene like Brian Pulido. I feel like they largely just ignore my comics. I have had a few pros refer to my work as ‘zines’ as a sort of insult.

I started Blood Desert as a big middle finger to the whole corporate comics crowd. The main character is stuck with a permanent middle finger. Good luck co-opting that sucktards.

When I complete the World of Knonx series I wanna only make comics that are a massive fuck you to that whole unimaganitive self indulgent English centric corporate comics world. I wanna make comics for shitheads all over the world like me.

Most of the comics in the mainstream indie world are leftovers from that hokey auto-bio movement. All of them are still pining over Crumb and Pekar to this day.

Who knew making super boring comics about your masturbation habits and history no one cares about would be considered as works of high literary art. I guess it is an easy claim to make when the critics also work for the publishers of said high grade comic “art.”

That is just the indy crowd. At this point most people’s knowledge of modern comics comes from dopey stupor hero comics and movies that are made for mouthbreathers by ex-television writers.

These books are made by “Professional” comic book writers that get top billing over a bunch of lazy artists. These are the same “professionals” who waste their time all day on Twitter and YouTube race baiting each other and blathering nonsense about politics. Somehow they can never seem to get books out on time or any real work done. Go figure.

Can we all just agree that the comics Youtubers are totally obnoxious. Normal people do not care about all your dumb nerd drama. The “comics news” channels love to foment drama in the industry to make money off of more views. They live to promote division among creators. Mind numbing 4 hour live streams of inane political blather. Interviewing the same old industry jobbers about some dopey superhero comic they made 20 years ago. Effete dorks gushing jizz in their whitey tighties over their wonton nostalgia.

These formerly bullied nerds bully each other constantly online. Doxing, Blacklisting, Censoring, Attacking and Canceling each other. Bunch of grade school kid popularity bullshit. I want absolutely NO part of either side’s dysfunctional cult. These sad people must love to live in a heightened state of anxiety.

There are 100s of amazing prolific working storytellers chomping at the bit to talk about and sell their titles. Why not interview and promote these creators. Artists who choose not to engage in either side’s petty childish games. Those creators are largely ignored or admonished for not taking sides.

The industry seems to only want to dwell in nostalgia? A Nostalgia that actually hurts creators. I really wanna talk about Alan Moore.

Let’s all wax about the greatness of Watchmen ONE last time and finally let it go. Watchmen is the comic book Alan Moore won’t even have in his house because of the disdain he has for the American comics industry.

Comics culture could care less about Alan. They talk about his work gushing with praise. Then they call the man a nutter behind his back.

The majority of the comics press treated him like a clown and discounted his opinions at every turn.

Watchmen, the comic they keep in print just so Alan does not regain any of the rights back.

By promoting and working on Watchmen in any way they are all pretty much saying fuck you to Alan. It is just accepted by everyone. “Oh well! We should just keep screwing this dude cause we all really love those characters.” It is shameful.

Shall I go on about the other creators that were screwed by this “industry”. Seigel, Shuster, Kirby, Finger, Simon and so many more.

The House of Morons track record with creatives is just as terrible. It would take all day to list the Big two’s transgressions against their freelancers.

All their Editors in Chief make millions while their freelancers get crumbs.

Or maybe there is hope in the price gouging comic book store owners. They did nothing but complain about Diamond and the Big 2’s scams non stop for years. Then they still lap up everything they do or make like pablum. Accepting and still embracing this constant abuse. Over and over and over. I wonder if the majority of store owners are into BDSM?

Should I bother mentioning all the sex predators that the major comics companies have been covering for?

So now after a long career and all my hard work building a loyal following I am supposed to kiss ass and play nice as a potential artist for them. I am supposed to work on shit I don’t care about? I get to beg for a job doing interior pages for less than minimum wage and no healthcare? No thanks. I am busy building my own worlds not piggybacking on the stolen worlds of others.

The US comics “industry” is kind of a total joke to me at this point.

ZL – It sounds like you are existing as part of a community though, maybe not an American comics community, but an international underground art community, does that seem fair to say?

AY – I was actually becoming a big part of the community for a popular comics Youtube channel for a minute until I was excommunicated. The two creators that host the channel constantly espouse to be a bastion for indie creators. As Maury Povich likes to say…” that is a lie.”

The channel blacklisted me because of a mini comic I did showing cartoon portraits of accused sex predators and general jerks working in the American comics industry.

I am not part of Comicsgate or any other stupid comics cult. I am not a lecherous ogre who harasses women at comics shows. I am a boring family man who makes weird comics. I speak through my art not by posting constant drama online.

I made a mini comic that someone didn’t like. That was it. Instead of finding out my side of things related to the matter these hosts just booted the videos my comics were featured in off their channel. They also had admins remove my posts off other platforms related to them. I was blatantly censored by these “artists.”

So looking back I think it had nothing to do with that mini comic. They have featured sexually violent work like Vigil’s. My stuff is tame in comparison. I feel they were threatened by my output and my dopey little youtube channel. Which is laughable.

I have worked tirelessly my whole career to support marginalized creators in my community and around the world for over 20 years.

At this point I would rather work with the people who get what I do and dwell in quiet obscurity rather than work with these kinds of self-serving troglodyte hacks that are so prevalent in the medium of modern mainstream comics and the art world.

Most of these “pro comic artists” are just glorified fan artists with a little bit of stylized skill. I think that’s why all their books are so derivative of all the other stuff in the mainstream lexicon. They dwell in constant nostalgia and their work is proof of it.

I actually feel sorry for them. To have so little faith in yourself that you have to try to take down other artists is such a sad pathetic way to live.

One thing you can count on with some artists and comics creators. Their egos are as fragile as glass.

Comics culture in the US is steeped in all this kind of nonsensical dogma. It has become an idiotic cult of reactionary clones with Youtube and Twitter accounts.

ZL – Thinking about that wider world of community and how there’s always been an underground arts community and sometimes people travelled through them, often linked to universities or small art publications. Do you feel like that community is something that is now easier to achieve and to curate for yourself with social media, but it involves a lot of effort and commitment to do that and that’s why it takes those in a scene, those dug into that creative feeling, to do that kind of curation?

AY – I guess It is easier to find new stuff now, but there is a lot of oversaturation online. Lots of skilled but boring fan art. Way too much fan art online.

All the crowdfunded stuff is pretty boring and derivative of the mainstream comics they say they hate. Plus there is a high failure rate. Very slow/low delivery rate on those projects that nobody likes to talk about.

I kind of wish the companies cracked down on all the IP theft at shows and online the way they do obscenity. Before the pandemic the comic conventions in the states sucked for indie creators because of all the fanart.

ZL – Yeah, that seems to be a big issue all round, but it’s also tricky as a lot of indie creators make bucks doing commissions of existing mainstream IP. I also think that the move from mini comics and zines to pop-culture sources and attempts to be as professional as professional comics has done a lot of unspoken damage. Yeah, sure, you get a lot of a crowd, but how many are BUYERS?

AY – That is why I stopped making any kind of fanart about 15 years ago including commissions. I think fan art and commissions are a crutch for artists to lean on.

To me it shows a lack of ability to tell stories or have faith in their own creations. They are too afraid to go all in and only make and sell their own comics. They wanna draw cool spidey pin-ups not tell stories with art. There is a huge difference between the two kinds of artists.

The best Mangaka spend their whole careers telling these long form epic stories. We should aspire to that aesthetic not do a bunch of cool variant covers.

It is easy to draw an existing IP. The design and imaginative work was done for you. You are just a human copy machine. It takes a lot of time and faith to go all in on your own ideas. I think a lot of artists try it and just give up and fall back on selling fan art at shows.

I do great at shows without any fan art. You don’t need it. I think selling fan art actually hurts indie creators. They are selling books for our competition.

If you just offer people something new and different and work hard to sell that work they will buy it. I offer people something that is unique. Not just another Deadpool print or sketch.

ZL – Do you see yourself as part of a comics lineage, either style or approach wise? Do you feel it’s important to leave your own mark on the world, hence the making of items rather than posting online, or are you interested in building a space for now or are you trying to just get out what needs to be got out to keep your brain quiet?

AY: Comics lineage is less of a thing now because of oversaturation in the medium. Everyone can make and print their own comics now. So the key is to have your own style of storytelling. I don’t like the autobio comics genre but at least they know how to tell a story.

That’s why I think physical media is still very important. An artist is not curtailed by the formats of printing anymore. You can adjust your style to any kind of printing process now. It used to be the other way around.

Aesthetically I want my work to be as beautiful and be as prolific as Osamu Tezuka was. Dark and creepy as Hideshi Hino‘s. Confrontational and cooky as Mike Diana‘s. With a mad dose of the dark action of a 2000AD Magazine.

Boiled Angel – Mike Diana

ZL – I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember the Mike Diana obscenity case and the outcome of that ridiculous situation? It was big, even in UK comic magazines at the time. I remember them telling him that he wasn’t even allowed to draw AT HOME and that they would be coming in to check that he wasn’t drawing! So, I guess there’s that as a check to what we were saying about social media silencing creators, it’s not like it’s a new phenomenon, sadly.

AY – I started getting into making fucked up comics at the same time as him. I was making One Last Day which is nowhere near as extreme or pornographic as Mike’s stuff, but it was really violent. His case scared me into being real careful who I sent my books to.

ZL – When did you first encounter Mike Diana’s work, then and what’s so inspiring about it?

AY- I have seen more of his work recently. I like the absolute absurdity of it. It was so hard to get out here in the west coast unless you ordered it. I am not a big fan of pornographic or cheesecake comics. I do like some of the cruder stuff that is just too weird to be arousing. The work exists more as a piece of weird art rather than porn in some odd way. I have not gotten to read a ton of his stuff. He is actually a big fan of mine on Instagram. The punk rock kid in me loves seeing a block of “likes” by Mike. I have mailed him a bunch of my comix for trade.If he is reading this “Yo man! You gotta mail me some of your books!” Heh!

ZL – I’m also intrigued to know how you found out about 2000AD as my understanding is that it’s not well known over in the US. What’s your favourite strip from there?

AY: I got a huge run of the re printed 2000AD and Dredd comics from a comic store when I was 13. I really love the old Rogue Trooper strips the most. They were some of the best sci fi war comics made essentially. Those artists were all emulating those old Action war comics they were reading

Rogue Trooper – War Machine by dave Gibbons and Will Simpson

Rogue Trooper – War Machine is a work of comics art. It definitely inspired a lot in my Blood Desert series. “The Fatties” stories in the early Judge Dredd strips are some of my all time favorite comics. I have read them a hundred times. It is just so nuts. I love that line between absurd and gross.

The Fatties – Judge Dredd

ZL – Oh yeah, those early works were really UK punk as punk can be! I’m surprised you like Rogue Trooper more than Nemesis though, Pat Mills and especially Kev O’Niell’s art is extreme as extreme art gets in comics back then. You mention in many interviews I’ve read that Japanese comics, particularly horror comics, have been an influence. How much influence do you see from Japanese horror comics in small press and self-publishing circles, it’s something I see a lot of in the creators I follow for sure, but I’m wondering what your experience is?

AY – I follow the underground Japanese scene pretty well. I am pen pals/friends with some of the newer japanese horror artists. It is funny. They all wanna get published here and I want to get published there.

There are huge barriers in Japanese comics for Westerners. I would kill to get World of Knonx published in Japan. It is specifically designed and made for a world audience. It needs no translation. Manga publishers should be more open to Western comic artists the way we have.

I have grown very weary of all manga flooding the market lately. Most of it is just nicer formated versions of reprints of that older stuff I read in the 80s. It is not the weird upcoming stuff you see on the shelves.

The American publishers bend over backwards to reproduce a lot of Manga but largely ignore American artists working at the same level of productivity. It has become a one way street.

ZL – I see that a lot of publishers seem less inclined to have cartoony horror, they seem to have decide it must all be cheesecake or more realistic, I mean, you’re not going to see the likes of Shaun McManus on Swamp Thing art chores nowadays, which seems absurd because cartooning lets you play up emotions or gore without it getting all pornographic and seedy. I wonder if part of it is that as well, they want everything in that style. It’s also something that’s changed in horror as well. You think about something like Saw and how realistic those horror movie effects are compared to, say Friday the 13th, it’s changed what horror is. You could laugh at those things, not so much Saw, they’re far more EARNEST and wanting to show things REALISTICALLY.

AY- Yes! Exactly. I have been embracing the cartoon aspect of comics very heavily. Cartooning is dying in comic books not just in the horror scene. Comics have lost the ability to move the fans to a desired emotion.

I think it has to do with the industry’s reliance on writers. Artists are usually more creative and experimental than writers. Artists think in images and writers think in words. Writers can hammer out stories all day. The storytelling artist has to really think about every panel in a conscious way and how it will move the story. Images should drive comics not inane narrative. I should be able to understand the story in a comic by just looking at the art. If not then both the writer and artist have failed. Being able to type does not automatically make your stories interesting. Kirby’s cartooning made all those comics great not Stan and his stupid dialogue.

Personally I don’t wanna spend 12 hours drawing the perfect building in a panel that no one will care about. I wanna move the story. Cartooning creates a fluidity through the pages that perfect structure loses. Manga is great at moving you through a story in that way.

ZL – So, in all of the ways you make things and with all of your feelings about being a part of US comics and international makers, what place do you see your new youtube videos playing into what you do? Is it more boredom relief or is it a way of pumping up awareness of the community you enjoy?

AY: I do the YouTube channel for fun and to shed light on independent creators. I also wanna try to create a new narrative in comics. Not just regurgitate the one fed to us by reactionary corporate comix culture.

ZL – Why the trash talking of something at the end? I ask because I have this pet theory that there’s a strong link between people doing underground comics currently, especially over the top gross out ones, and wrestling and I’m wondering whether that’s a bunch of nonsense I’ve made up, or whether this is like the trash talk between wrestlers, a funny sort of way to make a point about something, to build some low stakes drama? Or, is it a way to disarm a serious point by making it funny!

AY: A little bit of both I guess. There is some carney action to all creatives who do it for a living. I think a long life as an artist hardens you.

Comic book artists could learn a lot from Tattooists. Talk to a hardcase who has been making money everyday drawing. The one doing it in your hometown the longest. That is someone who can teach you a lot. They have had to put up with so much stupid shit from customers and society. They have a confidence and respect for their trade few artists do. They have real confidence that is inspiring. They won’t even fuck with some stupid walk-in. They are not gonna deal with some kid who wants a shitty Mickey Mouse tat. Some hokey fan art commission bullshit. People pay them good fucking money for their original style, skill and creativity. Comic artists conceded all that when they settled for being what amounts to storyboarders for ex-TV writers.

Artists have to always remember Western society devalues you at every turn. You really have to learn to sell your art and self. Your skin better be real thick. You hear “no” and that “you will fail” constantly! You will work your ass off just to barely make it in most creative fields.

ZL – Yeah, that really comes with the territory, especially if you’re coming at it from an underprivileged background, art seems to still be a very middle class opportunity and still seems to need strong patronage to make a living, so if you’re aren’t populist or aren’t from the right background you need to get money from somewhere else or learn to live cheap.

AY – Starting out it is always a struggle in any field but comics has kind of embraced and even fostered failure among it’s creatives. A perfect example. No one with the talent level of Tim Vigil’s should ever be living in poverty. Which he pretty much is. If Tim started in tattoos he would probably be pretty set by now. Instead he chose to work in comics.

ZL – You seem to be really knocking out your comics and developing an amazing backlist. I remember sharing a video where, I think that you were drawing a page from The Lottery, where you were filling in your spot blacks with this chunky dip pen nib and that just seemed like it would take a long time to get work done! So, I’m wondering whether you’ve changed up a gear and started doing lots of work, or am I just in circles where I’m seeing you pop up and you’ve been constantly busy for a long time?

AY – I mainly use a brush for large areas. Sometimes a fat nib. I have had the same process for the last 10 years. I have always had a pretty good work ethic with my art but my tools are just that. Lots of trial and error for the first 5-10 years. I had no one to help or any training. I am a lot faster at inking with some modern stuff but it is still the same process it has always been. I try to only work full time M-F 9-5. I love creating so much I get addicted to it. I will draw 18 hours straight if I am not careful.

ZL – What inspired you to get making, not necessarily the style you make, but the actual circumstances behind you getting yourself together to put out comics instead of just sketching or posting online? What is the difference for you between posting online and publishing?

AY – Posting online is just a form of promo to me. Online is so ephemeral. I feel printed comics and animation is the best way to tell new stories and get them out. Period. It is hard to say what inspired me to start creating. I can tell you how I create though.

I have always hated the idea of needing drugs, a muse or constant inspiration as motivation. It is not a sustainable model. It is a crutch for lazy artists to lean on. We all can learn skills and borrow from influences to make pretty art but real creativity comes from our imaginations.

Clive Barker said it in interview after interview for years! He spoke of how fostering the imagination is being lost and even stifled in today’s world. He stressed the utmost importance for working artists and children to have an active and focused imagination. He is the greatest living horror artist of our age. The Poe of our time and everyone completely ignored him!!

Well I didn’t! I would meditate and do mental exercises daily for years to try and imagine whole working worlds. Clive was 100% right. I don’t get artists’ block or any of that shit.

This is gonna sound super new age but it is the best way to explain it. With short meditation techniques I can light the fire of creativity instantly now. It can keep me awake some nights if I let it. My mind’s eye fills with the most moving and colorful images you could ever imagine. I have learned to embrace it and snatch stuff from the ether. It’s like a true form of art magick. When I break into the astral plane of endless creativity it recharges my inner being and overwhelms my soul with love, and joy. I am flooded with new ideas constantly. The Buddhists actually have a name for this place but the name escapes me.

ZL – I remember reading that Moebius, Jean Giraud, the French comic artist took a similar approach, that he drew all his Moebius strips in a semi-conscious state of meditation, so it seems reasonable for you to do the same!

AY – Exactly! I have read that and felt a kinship with him. I think Jim Woodring works in a similar fashion as well.

ZL – Yeah, I’ve read that about Jim Woodring as well.

Looping back a second to The Lottery, I really admire the style of character design, the shapes you put down on the page, that I’ve seen in that. I’m guessing, from what you’ve just said, that much of these things arrive semi or fully formed? How much planning do you put into character design and story content and then could you give a general idea to how you approach a story and what you’re trying to achieve with your stories?

AY: Like I said prior, the initial ideas will come like a flood or in pieces. I will mentally “hang on” to my favorite ideas and build a story around them. Once I get most of it all sorted out in my brain I will do some general super loose thumbnails of a story or idea or the whole book. Sometimes I will start with a one shot style story and expand on it. The one shots will inspire more stories or ideas for other worlds as well.

ZL – I know we touched on this earlier, but I’d like to dig deeper into whether you’re making money and what sort of sales you’re achieving, because, you know, I’m just damn nosey! More seriously though, I think part of making and why people cease making is an unrealistic idea of what can be achieved within an arena. The amount of people coming into comics and underground comix all thinking they’ll end up on Adult Swim or bankrolling a comfortable life always saddens me. You know they will get worn out banging their drum to sell 10 copies and lose hundreds because they completely over print.

Which is a very tortured way of asking whether you make money from your comics or, at least break even? Are you happy to tell us numbers of sales and if not exact amounts of income, what sort of percentage of your income comes from your comic sales and for context, the kind of lifestyle you currently live?

AY: I grew up pretty poor. I was out on my own at around 17 with zero money. So it has not been an easy road for me in art and comics. I am not complaining, I have made good money off my comix.

I print modestly with print on demand services. I can print a few copies up to a few 100 at a time. It just depends on demand. You don’t need to have a warehouse of stuff. I focus on the stuff that does well.

It took a long time but I am in a great spot on my own. Because of the virus a lot of the mainstream crowd are kind of sitting around with their dicks in their hands. While I am hammering out stories. I am 100% owner of all my titles. I am not an LLC so a corporation can’t get my “creative content” without my direct consent.

Luckily I don’t really need them. I have done the math, I make way more per page and book then I ever would with a publisher. I can create, print, promo, mail and repeat. I have no need for censors, editors, publishers, stores, mob run distro or other middle men. They are all just standing between me and making the profit from my books.

No one will admit it, but the Cerebus model is still the best model for creators to sell their comics. If you are serious about ownership. More people should have the same faith in their work as Dave Sim does. Only without being a total jerk.

ZL – I’m guessing your politics don’t mesh with his, but I think Dave Sim is definitely someone who has lessons for self-publishers and creators alike. If you were going to pass on any of his advice, how would you summarise what you’ve taken from his example?

AY – His politics aside he was pretty cantankerous in most of his interviews but he was not afraid to speak his mind. Everyone is so afraid to speak up in fear of never getting or keeping that “sweet corporate comics gig”.

Dave was right about a lot of stuff. If you can’t stand up for your own work then who will? Before I started reading all his interviews I thought he was just a jerk but now I kind of get his anger. I could only imagine what the mainstream tried to pull back then when they saw he wouldn’t play ball. What’s worse is nothing has changed really. All the shit he was raving about in comics is the same or even worse.

I think he was really hated by the industry when he started speaking out about all the shadiness going on. It always felt the comics press started attacking his political stances after he started to state his opinions about the practices of some of these publishers. I don’t agree with him on a lot of stuff politically but he never backed down and stayed true to his ideals. I admire him for that.

Comics has a long sordid history of trying to silence voices they don’t want to hear. It has happened to me and many others still to this day.

ZL – How long has it taken to build up your back catalogue and what sort of tail end do you currently see on your titles, are we talking release and then forget it, sustained sales over months/years or occasional bumps when you get new titles out?

AY – It took 20 years to build the whole catalogue of large format stuff. I have printed 100s of different minis along the way. I now just mainly sell my larger format floppy and magazine stuff that does well continuously. I do have a goal to be able to fill a whole small magazine size comic book box with all my different floppy comics and mags.

ZL – And how far away from that goal are you?

AY – I have never actually checked. I would say I am well over halfway there.

ZL – How do your sales and income compare to where you thought you’d be when you first started making your comics or did you not really care about that, other than not losing money?

AY: It is a weird thing that exists in indie comics. It is like they are ashamed of making money.

You hear so much altruism in indie comics. “It is not always about the money man.” Tell that dumb shit to a career tattooist. They will laugh in your stupid face while they make $200 bucks an hour and drive off in their fully customized Dodge Challenger. While you stand there with a handful of comics and empty pockets.

We should look at indy comics like tattooing or a little like a one man touring metal band or rap act. People wanna buy my books for my nutty unique style. So, yeah I am doing better than I ever could have dreamed of in such a dismal backwards looking field. I would rather be like a Tech 9 or Frank Zappa in comics.

ZL – Last question, for you as a fan now, if you could get everyone in the world to read one of your books or series and a book or series by someone else, what would it be?

AY: Out of all my books I would say the World of Knonx series is my crowning achievement. I dumped every skill I have developed into one massive tale.

Park Bench – by Christophe Chabouté. It is one of the most amazing comics made in the last few years. It is one of the most beautiful comics ever made. It flows like water. It is the zen of comix. I cried the first time I read It.

Park Bench – by Christophe Chabouté

I only make silent or wordless comics. So that is mainly what I am into. It is more common in European comics. So I try to mainly follow works coming from there.

Comics should move us and excite us. Gross you out or move you to a new place emotionally. Not just be inane 80s TV sitcom serials. I am only interested in comics that exist and aspire to be comics. I have no interest in storyboards with dialogue.

ZL – Thanx for your time Adam!

AY- Thanks for this in-depth interview. It is not often I get to talk deeply about things in comix that I care about. I never really get to explain how I create or how I truly feel about the medium.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak my mind. To everyone who has ever supported me and my art. I truly frikkin’ love you all!!

all art copyright and trademark its respective owners.

content copyright iestyn pettigrew 2020

Adam Yeater, underground comix creator, talks in depth about his practice, his work and how comics remains closed to many outside of mainstream companies #comics #horror #underground #selfpublishing #fantasy #inspiration We spoke to Adam a little while ago about his influences and inspirations and found his answers intriguing, so we decided to dive in and dig a bit deeper.

#comics #horror #illustration #interview #smallpress #zines

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aion-rsa · 5 years

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House of X and Powers of X: Key X-Men Comics to Read

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We picked out some key books from Marvel's history to help you understand the big X-Men reboot.

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House of X and Powers of X have done the unthinkable: they’ve made having an encyclopedic knowledge of Marvel X-Men continuity minutiae an asset. Now I have a reason to talk about Xorn’s brother Xorn who was posing as Magneto pretending to be Xorn OTHER than to make someone go away.

This is, of course, a joke. HoX/PoX is remarkably accessible for anyone with any level of background knowledge of the X-Men, from “I like Hugh Jackman” to “remember the time the Sentinels tried to kill the sun because it was causing mutations?” But there is certainly a lot in here that rewards deeper knowledge. And to help you understand it all, we put together a reading list that might help you see the throughlines from Marvel Comics history that help create the comics sensation revitalizing the X-Men books.

For this reading guide, we’re not only going to tell you what’s good and why we like it. We’re also going to try and piece together how it fits into what Jonathan Hickman and crew are doing in today’s series. Because of that, we’re slapping a big ol’ SPOILER WARNING here: proceeding beyond this point risks spoiling big twists from the first half of the HoX/PoX epic.

FOR GENERAL BACKGROUND: X-Men: Grand Design

Ed Piskor is the indie comix guy who, prior to this book, was best known for a webcomic-turned-prestige-series, Hip-Hop Family Tree, which told the story of the origins of the biggest genre in music (it’s fantastic, by the way). His acclaim for that book, where he would quite frequently homage superhero covers, eventually garnered enough attention from Marvel for them to take a risk on him. In a fit of uncharacteristic ambition, they allowed Piskor to rework thirty years and 300 issues of X-Men or X-adjacent comics into one miniseries. The result is absolutely stunning.

There are retcons involved, but Piskor manages to turn several eras of comics history into one coherent narrative. Retcons become plot points, characters move rationally instead of for post-hoc rationales and slow-burn payoffs are seeded even earlier. It’s all done with a distinctly underground style, which is refreshing and appropriate, since this is the era when the X-Men became counterculture iconography.

In other words, if you need the best X-Men comics history lesson imaginable, this is the book for you.

Pay close attention to: Anything with Moira Mactaggert. The revelation in House of X #2 that current Marvel continuity was the tenth time Moira had been resurrected and that she had been planning for six lives to protect the mutant race casts literally the entirety of X-Men history in a new light. So now any interaction with the Professor or his students, like, say, when she was watching Jean Grey become the Phoenix on Muir Island, has potentially new meaning. Grand Design is particularly valuable here because Piskor started before the planning for Hickman’s relaunch did, so you are reading source material that the rebooter himself was probably working off of.

read more - The Best Episodes of X-Men: The Animated Series

You may also like: For tone and craft, X-Men: Grand Design is unique. Despite countless reboots and cleanups attempted in the almost 50 years the X-Men have been published, nothing to my knowledge has been this comprehensive or accessible. However, if you like the characters and the idea of a modernized, streamlined origin-esque story, Jeff Parker and Roger Cruz’s mid-aughts series, X-Men First Class, which tells new stories with the original team of X-Men, is worth checking out. It’s a lot of fun, certainly a lot more fun than reading the original Silver Age issues themselves.

start with the first volume of X-Men: Grand Design here.

TO UNDERSTAND THE BIG THEMES: Ultimate Comics: Hawkeye

No, I’m not kidding. I am absolutely recommending an alternate universe Hawkeye miniseries in an article about X-Men comics.

On his way to destroying it, Jonathan Hickman was given space to play around with the Ultimate Universe, and he used it, writing a Thor miniseries and relaunching the Ultimates. Ultimate Comics: Hawkeye was the third prong of his overall story and it focused on a fictional country - the Southeast Asian Republic - as Hawkeye and a team of SHIELD agents arrive on site to deal with a civil war. We quickly find out that SEAR scientists have created a virus to eliminate the X-gene, and a serum that gives their own people a virus-resistant mutation. A “paradigm shift,” as one of the SEAR officials calls it.

That government unleashes both prongs of the plan and promptly loses control of the situation, setting up SEAR as a mutant haven for people taking their serum and thus one of the three prongs of a global conflict that plays out in Ultimate Comics: Ultimates.

Pay close attention to: The Xorns. Not because they’re anything like the ones who have shown up in HoX/PoX - the ones in House of X have only thus far been glimpsed, and the millennial nihilist icon from Powers of X is a corpse in an alternate timeline (probably).

read more - Pryde of the X-Men: The Animated Series We Almost Got

No, we’re watching the Xorns in Ultimate Comics: Hawkeye because the idea of mutants as resources in a geopolitical struggle seems central to the conflict playing out between the Krakoan mutants and the humans in the X^1 timeline of today’s series. With all the talk of omega mutants and alignments, you should be able to get a very good sense of what is to come in the mutant conflict by reading this.

You may also like: Ultimate Comics: Ultimates, Hickman and eventual Secret Wars collaborator Esad Ribic’s story of what else is going on in the world while SEAR blows up. That story is mainly concerned with SHIELD being woefully outgunned by the mutants on one side, and evil Reed Richards’ Asgard- and Europe- destroying hyper evolved Children. It’s really good.

read Ultimate Comics Hawkeye here.

FOR A SENSE OF THE TONE: “Days of Future Past”

“Days of Future Past” is right smack in the middle of what Piskor covers in Grand Design. So why read it separately? Because I strongly suspect this is the foundational text of what Hickman is trying to do with his story.

This is one of the all-time classic X-Men stories by maybe the most well liked team in the franchise’s history. In the far future of 2013, Sentinels have taken control of the US and are on their way to taking over the world, because they see human existence as the flaw causing mutation that they are programmed to wipe out. So they kill most of the heroes and round up the remaining ones into camps. Wolverine, Rachel Summers (in her first appearance), Katherine Pryde (not long after her debut), Colossus, Storm and Magneto all team up so Rachel can send Kitty’s consciousness back in time, take over her younger body and prevent the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (led by Mystique and Destiny) from killing Senator Robert Kelly, sending the future spiralling towards extinction.

These two issues function as an effective preview of the conflict that HoX/PoX explores. Humans are irrationally afraid of Mutants, who alternate between trying to be left alone and trying to dominate their progenitors. Meanwhile, the robots say “you both suck” and (presumably before falling into the sun in the case of Mothermold) just start killing.

read more: X-Men Movies Watch Order

Furthermore, “Days of Future Past” is precisely the kind of dystopia that PoX is pushing. The X^2 future has lot of Age of Apocalypse trappings, but its central conflict is between mutants trying desperately to survive and robots who hate everything biological trying to destroy everyone. Surprisingly, though Nimrod is closely associated with this dark future, he doesn’t actually appear in these issues. He comes back in time about 50 issues later, from that future but not seen in it.

Pay close attention to: The mood and milieu of this story are the important factors, but it’s also probably worth keeping an eye on Destiny and Moira Mactaggart here. The mutant precog had one very...pointed...run in with Groundhog Lady in her third life, and they come very close to each other here. This may be fertile territory for a retcon.

You may also like: Uncanny X-Men #208-209. This is Nimrod’s big battle with the X-Men and the Hellfire Club’s Inner Circle, as Rachel Summers lays dying in Central Park. It’s nowhere near the bleak, oppressive tone that “Days of Future Past” has, but you get some sense here of the sheer power that Nimrod has at his disposal. Also, he’s clearly insane, and as far as things you want from your robots, insanity is not high on the list.

read Days of Future Past here.

TO UNDERSTAND THE MAIN VILLAIN: “The Phalanx Covenant”

The X-Men crossover that introduced Generation X, the second wave of mutant students after the New Mutants/X-Force, also seems surprisingly important. Originally presented as an offshoot of the techno-organic space mutant Warlock’s race, the Phalanx are half Borg, half grey goo nightmare. In this story, they invade Earth to assimilate and destroy it, but find that they can’t assimilate mutants, so they start trying to figure out why by kidnapping the X-Men and a group of teens identified as potential students. They fail, of course, but not before planting phalanx eggs around the planet and killing off a character who became inexplicably popular a year and a half later (Blink, who existed in the 616 for a grand total of 20 minutes before dying. She’s great, but I don’t get why she endured and not someone like Synch).

read more: The Many Different Versions of the X-Men Dark Phoenix Saga

The Phalanx are the hive galaxy in the X^3 future being called down by the Librarian to assimilate humanity, and it looks like (at least in whatever life of Moira’s this is), they’re finally successful.

Pay close attention to: Husk and M. I went back and forth on whether to prioritize this or the other comics you might like, trying to figure out which is more important to the narrative, and what sold me on The Phalanx Covenant is the fact that Husk and M are part of the X-Men strike force attacking Mothermold in space in House of X. They’re also two of the more plot-relevant members of Generation X during this crossover - Monet is the one who finally breaks them out of captivity, and Husk’s powers are revealed because one shell is infected with TO virus. That doesn’t feel like a coincidence.

You may also like: Annihilation: Conquest. This is the second mid-aughts Marvel Space crossover, the first helmed by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning exclusively, and the one that launched this line of books into what would eventually give us the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. The galaxy is reeling from the events of Annihilation, and as it recovers, the Phalanx take over Hala and the remains of the Kree empire. This series is good, pure Marvel Space fun. It’s the exact moment where I fell in love with this line of books. It’s also very thorough in laying out the mythology and rules of the Phalanx.

read The Phalanx Covenant here.

TO TAKE A WILD GUESS ON WHAT IS YET TO COME: “The Dark Angel Saga”

This run on Uncanny X-Force, ostensibly a side book full of stabby mutants (and Deathlok) brought together first as Cyclops’ wetworks squad, then held together by Angel’s money, is without a doubt the best X-Men comic of the last 15 years. It’s also brimming with Apocalypse lore, which feels like one of a couple things left deliberately unstated by the events of HoX/PoX.

The gang finds an Akkaba enclave in the desert, discovering that they’ve resurrected Apocalypse and are training the now six year old kid to be the evolutionary destroyer they believe he’s destined to become. So Fantomex shoots the kid in the head.

read more: The X-Men Movies You Never Saw

What follows is an extended superhero musing on nature vs. nurture, while at the same time the Death Seed Apocalypse planted in Angel’s back to turn him into Archangel takes over Warren’s mind, turning him into the new Apocalypse. The story goes through all the reasons for it and has Warren reassemble his horsemen. It functions essentially as a deep dive into the reasons for Apocalypse’s ascension and the role that he plays in the galactic ecosystem of the Marvel Universe.

That’s noticeably missing from Apocalypse’s scenes in the new series.

Pay close attention to: The Celestial stuff. Apocalypse in Powers of X was a heroic figure, leading a suicide mission against Nimrod and the robots to get Moira information on Nimrod’s emergence so she could stop it in life 10. There’s no mention of the role he was originally created for, one that exists separate from the Moira cycle because it started thousands of years before she was born: to guide evolution on Earth so the Celestials don’t return and destroy it. How that plays into the man-mutant-machine war seems like a clear fit, but also completely unmentioned.

You may also like: Uncanny X-Men vol. 2 #14-17. Even though it takes place during the utterly dreadful A vs. X, Kieron Gillen’s Mr. Sinister story is the definitive recent take on the master genetic manipulator, and he’s DEFINITELY coming.

read The Dark Angel Saga here.

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Feature Jim Dandy

Sep 10, 2019

Marvel

X-Men

Jonathan Hickman

from Books https://ift.tt/2ZPW4sO

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knifeonmars · 6 years

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Desert Island Comics, Part 2

In packing my things up for my move I made the difficult decision to get rid of most of my monthly issues, about 4 longboxes worth. It wasn't an easy, but I've never considered myself a collector of comic books so much as just a reader. I don't want to fetishize or hoard the physical object, because it's largely beside the point for me. So I combed through my longboxes and filled a single shortbox with the comics I couldn't bear to part with and which I thought would be fun to leaf through at some indeterminate point in the future, thinking less about collectability than my personal attachment to them. So there are some arguably strange choices in here.

Daredevil The Waid/Samnee/Rivera Daredevil was and is a really important comic to me personally. It's actually the book which first got me into a comic book shop back when I was around 16 or 17 years old. I had read comics before, whether online or through my local library, but I was finally at an age where I had money to spend on this ludicrous hobby and I remember seeing the first interviews and previews around the book and being immediately interested, just knowing that this was a book I had to read. The series itself more than bore that out. It was at once awesome throwback superhero action and a deeper and more meaningful exploration of depression and trauma. To this day I look at it as a perfect example of all-caps SUPERHERO COMICS. Midnighter/Midnighter and Apollo Not so much a formative book for me as just a favorite. I loved Midnighter and its sequel because it's a wild action comic with big ideas and a wrecking ball of a protagonist. It also took Midnighter from being a kind of one note character to a personal favorite, and I was overjoyed when the sequel did some of the same for Apollo, who I always thought got kind of short shrift as a result of being the less traditionally masculine partner in the duo. Age of Apocalypse The first of my picks which probably constitutes a weird personal favorite which no one else has ever heard or cared about, Age of Apocalypse was a somewhat shortlived 2011-2012 series spinning out from Rick Remender's lauded X-Force run. The original Age of Apocalypse is mostly remembered as this kind of buckwild glam dystopian romp, but this series was a lot more lowkey and less bombastic. Focusing on the X-Terminated, a group of human rebels made up of alternate reality versions of traditional anti-mutant X-Men foes, the series focused on their desperate and hard fought attempts to secure some kind of future for themselves and their people. It was a fairly dark book but not one without its charms, and I always felt that it managed to strike a good balance between the alternate universe walking tour of "Here's a weird alternate version of this character!" and actually having characters and conflict which are interesting on their own merit. X-Treme X-Men Included primarily for it's ending crossever with Age of Apocalypse, X-Treme X-Men was still a really fun series. Initially focusing on a group of alternate reality X-Men hunting evil versions of Charles Xavier across the multiverse, it was very much an updated take on the now recently revived Exiles formula. Like I said, it's not necessarily an essential book for me, but it is fun and energetic and certainly fun to read. X-Termination I mentioned the crossover between Age of Apocalypse and X-Treme X-Men, also including Amazing X-Men. To be honest, X-Termination, as the name probably implies, isn't a lighthearted read. There's a high bodycount, and specifically coming to it after the hard fought victories of Age of Apocalypse, the ending is very much a gut punch. It's a solid read, but it's not a particularly pleasant one. I couldn't ignore it though, given my affection for Age of Apocalypse. Lobster Johnson In my opinion one of the more accessible Hellboy spinoffs, Lobster Johnson is just pure fun pulp comics which nonetheless manage to make their main character strange and interesting. Recent stories have seen the character dynamics complicated in interesting ways which I look forward to seeing more of. Nighthawk The unfortunately shortlived Walker/Villalobos/Bonvillain series is another favorite of mine. I dunno, Nighthawk hit at a time when I was all too happy to read a comic where a badass superhero beat the shit out of overreaching cops and contend with sinister gentrifiers. It's a cool looking, violent, and downright mean comic which I just love to bits and I consider it a damn shame that Marvel's left the series so unloved. A MAX version or a revival with the upcoming Marvel Knights relaunch would be a hit, at least with me personally. AXIS: Hobgoblin Maybe my strangest pick. Back during the regrettable and forgettable AXIS event, Rick Remender's turn at doing one of Marvel's regularly scheduled and almost inevitably flawed event comics, a bunch of heroes and villains got mind whammied and had their moral alignments inverted; heroes becoming villains and villains becoming heroes. The consequences of this played out not just in the event itself but in a variety of spinoffs and minis, among which was this short three issue mini. I just think it's a fun romp. The art is gorgeous, and Roderick Kingsley is maybe the most interesting he's ever been as a blowhard superhero who's in it for the money and the fame. Another book which I wish could have seen more of, but as it is, a fun artifact from a terrible event comic. Hawkeye Fraction/Aja/Wu/Hollingsworth. A classic which I actually don't feel unambiguously positive about. I remember the many delays and schedule slippage back when it was first coming out put me off somewhat. Still though, I can't deny that it was a good series, especially at the beginning. I didn't love the direction it ultimately took, and I though that the release strategy for the final arcs, alternating issues between Kate and Clint, wasn't a great idea, and the delays exacerbate that, but it was a very good series and I've always kind of planned to revisit now that it's over. Also, it introduced me to The Rockford Files, which holds some sentimental value. Multiversity Grant Morrison's spaghetti thrown at the wall maxiseries, Multiversity is hit and miss, but full of ideas and energy and I couldn't bear to part with it. Something about the single issue format just feels so integral to the strangeness of that series that I wanted to keep hold of it in that original format. Catalyst Comix Here's something about me; I love anthologies. They're always hit or miss, but Ienjoy that quality to them, and Catalyst Comix, while shortlived, was incredibly energetic and interesting. I kept it because I figured that leafing through my shortbox however many years down the line, I'd probably be delighted by the energy and originality that Catalyst Comix had on display. Transformers Vs GI Joe I'm a big Tom Scioli fan, and while I've frankly never cared much about either of the involved properties, I love his unhinged weaving together of them and the sheer go for broke madness of this series. Also, I deeply admire the high concept silliness of them doing a one shot which was a pseudo-adaptation of an imagined film version of the original series. Secret Weapons I've never connected much with the so-called Valiant Universe comics beyond Quantum and Woody, but Secret Weapons was an unexpected delight for me. It's a wonderful ragtag team story which makes the by now somewhat complicated Valiant Universe fairly approachable and unintimidating. The art is absolutely killer too, a refreshing break from what I find to be Valiant's somewhat bland house style. Prophet Here's a series which is harder to talk about now than it was a year ago. The Prophet epic that Brandon Graham helmed with a murderer's row of great artists was a favorite of mine when I was first reading monthly comics, and having revisited it I think it largely holds up, if sagging a bit in the middle portions. I'm particularly partial to the first arc, following the would be Newfather Prophet across a strange and utterly alien far future Earth in a story which evoked sword and sorcery adventure. Man of Steel #22 I'm not much for collecting and preserving comics, but I decided on keeping Man of Steel #22 because I love Steel. To me, Steel is one of the single best superhero comic ideas ever. We're always told that Superman's greatest ability is to inspire people, and Steel is the perfect embodiment of that idea, in the conveniently medium appropriate form of a dude in a supersuit just whaling on bad guys. I love him.

#comics #personal #moving #words

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claycomix · 7 years

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depression comix #328

Music has helped me deal with a lot of problems in my life. I listen to what a lot of people call “depressing” music, but that so-called “depressing” music is often a similar voice that I can relate to during those times. The singer feels the same way I do. I’m not alone.

For this strip, I wanted to do something different. I added an extra “fifth” panel which I did a year before. I like these fifth panels because they allow me to stretch out a bit and draw a panel on a single piece of paper, and add a little depth to the story. I liked the image of these two singing together, two friends sharing their pain in a positive way. It took a few sketches to get it right, and a few tries to get which Leonard Cohen lyric to use, but it came out OK (I first used lyrics from “Chelsea Hotel #2” – “We are ugly but we have the music.”, which is what apparently Janis Joplin said to Leonard Cohen, but didn’t work without context so I switched to lyrics from “Joan of Arc”)

Another idea I had was a playlist with which readers could vote to make a playlist of depressing music that they liked. When this went live, I realized that readers could not enter their own songs to vote on, making it kind of useless. So for the first hour of the comic strip going up, I scrambled to find a replacement, which I did — Spotify. This ended up being a better idea because readers could actually listen to the songs people suggest, and it would be a comminity thing. Unfortunately, with some solutions, more problems pop up — I had to enter the songs into Spotify manually, and many songs were not licensed for use in Japan, and people ended up sending me long lists. It took me a long time to search for and enter all the songs, and people are STILL sending me suggestions though I closed that off long ago.

It was a great thing to do for the comic, and something that made the one comic a little more special. I should do these kind of things more often, they really add to the experience of reading all these monochromatic comics.

Read here -> https://www.depressioncomix.com/posts/328/

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#depression comix

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onetwofeb · 7 years

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By: Carl Wilson August 2, 2017

One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by HILOBROW friends and regulars during 2017, on the subject of our favorite squads.

WHY I AM NOT A NEW YORK SCHOOL POET

I am not a New York School poet, I’m a rock critic, though I think I’d rather not be. Why? Well, many days as a young man, younger and more man than I wished, I would go to the library on Colborne Street with a series of questions that were the same question: Where did this culture come from? This meaning the one I most cared about, with punk rock, late-night TV, David Lynch, comix zines in it, though I also cared about literature or jazz, e.g., which weren’t much in it, except by rare invitation. If you were a young man you mostly found out the answers were drugs, the Velvet Underground, the Weather Underground, the Beat Generation. If you were lucky maybe someone told you John Cage. (Dadaists and surrealists, bien sur, but that’s over in the other place.) Around when you were catching on that Andy Warhol’s banana pulled more weight than John Cale’s viola, when you were not as young a man, or if you never were a man, the Beat Generation would be making you very tired, in aggregate though not every particulate, above all for the denouncing and pronouncing, which the Republicans later heard about, and yelled GOOD IDEA. Finally you found out, maybe from poems copied for you by a woman you loved who was smarter than you, about the New York School in the 1950s, who were John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara, James Schuyler, and Kenneth Koch (pronounced Coke like the coke-bottle glasses). Optionally also Barbara Guest, Joe Brainard, Ted Berrigan, and Bernadette Mayer, et al. All indifferent to denouncing and pronouncing, yet (don’t tell the internet) not bored or evil but rather so beautifully exhilarated about having washed up on Manhattan-which-was-still-Manhattan from wherever (who remembered?) on waves of splattered paint. In “The Morning of the Poem,” Schuyler told this story about what it was like for them to meet (I took the line indents out, it was too much): “When I first knew John Ashbery he slipped me one of his trick test questions (we were looking at a window full of knitted ribbon dresses): ‘I don’t think James Joyce is any good: do you?’ Think, what did I think! I didn’t know you were allowed not to like James Joyce. The book I suppose is a masterpiece: freedom of choice is better. Thank you, ‘Little J.A. in a Prospect of Flowers.’” Joyce or no Joyce, their poems rejoice in letting in brows of all furrinesses and their friends as characters (poetry will be sociable or not at all!), and exclamation marks, kangaroos and Cokes, Kenneth or otherwise. If New Yorkers were Dr. Seuss drawings, or Lana Turner were Popeye, or cherubs were epistemology, Republicans never noticed and still don’t. Women were seldom props for William Tell practice; mercy, some of the poets were women, though more of their painter friends were, and returning to figuration. A few were even heteros. Granted, lots, whatever gender, were Ivy League valedictorians and track stars for Mineola Prep. There are dodgy tales about their dealings with LeRoi Jones, who fled them into the arms of Amiri Baraka. Still, in some insane time like 1952 or 1955 it seems they’d already known not only about late-night TV and comix zines (collages!) and that not as much literature would follow, but also that queer shoulders would get sprung from the wheel. So they held Stonewall some 15 years in advance, down the hall from Uncle Wystan Auden’s apartment (he left early) and celebrated all morning and mourned all night. They were so sad that they wrote about happiness, removing the transition between the two so the straights couldn’t prosecute it. And wrote novels together, and ridiculous plays, very fast, that they made each other star in. (Oh, the punishment theaters now inflict for the crime of having written a play! “Development”? No, no. Do it like this.) They glowered drunk at each other’s boy-and-girl-friends at parties but always went to the parties (or not at all) and borrowed typewriters there, if they weren’t over in the other place, because Paris-which- wasn’t-exactly-still-Paris was their own time-travel destination. They were the last pack of poets who wanted to be painters, instead of rock stars. So if Frank O’Hara had lived past 40 (Fire Island, dune buggy) maybe he would have run a Factory that built a better Brillo box. But I didn’t come from that culture. Even though now the palaces give my beloved little J.A. all the crackerjacks for being still here, so wistful and so bereft of blood relations. I came from this culture (notice my pronunciation), where you can say James Joyce was bad all day long and nobody gets mad or exhilarated or starts looking at ribbon dresses. It’s called SARDINES.

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geekade · 7 years

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The Pain-in-the-Ass-a-Thon is back!!!

It's almost that time again! Last year, my partners at Geekade and I teamed up with the Colon Cancer Alliance to do a 24-hour game streaming event where we played pain-in-the-ass video games to raise money for colon cancer research & awareness. Get it? Pain in the ass? Colon cancer? I know, I’m hilarious. Well, we’re doing it again this year, and I’ve got my fingers crossed that we’ll be able to raise even more than we did last time. ($2600 is the number to beat!) We're going bigger this year too! We've got better equipment, harder games, special guests, and probably something to eat other than Funions. So, let's get the important stuff out of the way: Here's how you watch and/or donate!

So, what is the Pain-in-the-Ass-a-Thon? What's this art auction all about? What games will be played? Who is playing them? Why should you care? I'm glad you asked! Let's start at the start. The idea came from my wife, actually. Her father, John Pobicki, passed away from colon cancer before I even met her. Since then, her and her family have always arranged some sort of colon cancer awareness event each year to raise money for the cause. When I met her, they were competing in the Colon Cancer Challenge, which is an annual walk/run organized event, and while it was always a lot of work to get their teams and donations together, it was something they were all happy to do. That is, until everyone’s lives started getting more complicated. A few years ago, my wife Karen physically could not make it to the event. I won’t bore you with the details, but her schedule was very complicated and it simply wasn’t feasible for her to be a part of it, and that really bummed her out. That’s when a light bulb lit up over my head. I’ve always wanted to do some sort of video game streaming charity event with Geekade, so I whipped up a proposal for the PITAthon, brought it to my partners, contacted the Colon Cancer Alliance, and we made it happen. My wife doesn’t have to go through the effort the Colon Cancer Challenge requires (though she may still someday) and she gets to be a part of something that raises money for a cause that’s near and dear to her.

Now that you know the backstory, let’s get to the games. The event starts Saturday, August 5th at 10am and runs through Sunday, August 6th at 10am. It will be streaming live at www.twitch.tv/geekade as well as Facebook Live and YouTube Live. We’ve broken it down into time slots for specific games with different people jumping in to play all manner of stuff. Let’s have a look.

10am-12pm

Game: Contra for NES

Players: Kris (me!) from the Stone Age Gamer Podcast and Evan from This Week’s Episode

Why it’s a pain in the ass: Contra is pretty legendary for its difficulty. It’s a relatively unforgiving game, but with enough time, patience, and a certain famous code, the game is very beatable. Evan and I have 2 hours, Evan hasn’t played Contra in at least 20 years, and we aren’t allowed to use the Konami code for the first hour. I’m pretty confident that I still have the muscle memory to beat Contra without the code, but just to keep things interesting, neither one of us is allowed to beat a level without the other. Honestly, we will probably play fast and loose with those restrictions, but I’m envisioning Evan getting very frustrated, which is going to be all manner of fun to watch.

12pm-3pm

Game: Comix Zone for Sega Genesis

Players: Dan and Kris (me, again!) from the Stone Age Gamer Podcast

Why it’s a pain in the ass: Have you ever played Comix Zone? Because if you have, you don’t need to ask that question. If you haven’t, the easiest way to break it down is that the game is completely unfair. Absolutely everything you do does damage. A bad guy blocks your punch? You take damage. You block a bad guy’s attack? You take damage. You need to break an obstacle that’s in your way? You take damage. And just to keep things even more interesting, you only get one life. It’s a completely awesome-looking game with a killer concept, but it’s incredibly hard. Dan and I will be taking turns trying to beat the game for 3 hours. I’ve never made it past level 3. Should be a good time.

3pm-4pm

Game: Sneak n Peek for Atari 2600

Players: Kris (Hey, that’s me!) from the Stone Age Gamer Podcast and SPECIAL GUEST Ferg from the Atari 2600 Game by Game Podcast

Why it’s a pain in the ass: Before we get to the nitty gritty, this is the first game we’ll be playing with our special guest Ferg! He will be coming to the PITAthon to play some games with us in-person, and Sneak n Peek was his suggestion. I know almost nothing about this game, save for what Ferg has told me. Which is that it’s basically hide and seek for Atari 2600. I can not imagine a world where that works well. Ferg was the one who suggested I play SwordQuest last year, so I have every confidence that this game is going to be a complete mess to play.

4pm-5pm

Game: Puzzle & Dragons

Players: Dan from the Stone Age Gamer Podcast, Dean from Vest & Friends, and Matt formerly of the Paper Cuts Podcast

Why it’s a pain in the ass: PAD is a mobile game that’s designed to be easy to play but difficult to master. Dan suggested that he play this game (as he would) in a particular mode, though. There’s something called the 3 Player Arena, and this is how Dan explained it to me.

“They are a pain in the ass because there are random spawns with pain in the ass mechanics that can end our run instantly. And they took a monster that had been a joke for a year and a half, gave her a bajillionty defense, and made her the boss.”

Dean also told me that while he and Dan have been putting together teams/decks specifically to take on these dungeons, Matt has not, which will apparently work as a sort of handicap to Dan and Dean. And watching Dean lose his mind over difficult games is always a good time. See: last year’s attempt to beat Ghosts n Goblins for NES.

5pm-7pm

Game: World Class Track Meet for NES

Players: Dan and Kris from the Stone Age Gamer Podcast, Ferg from the Atari 2600 Game by Game Podcast, and anyone else who’s in the room.

Why it’s a pain in the ass: This one is probably the most literal pain in the ass of all the games we’ll be playing. It’s not particularly hard, or bad, or anything really. What it is though is a game controlled with the Power Pad, and what we all are is out of shape. So this game will cause us all actual, physical pain to play. If you ever wanted to watch a bunch of sweaty, old guys bouncing around on a Power Pad, now’s your chance!!! We will be playing in Olympics mode, and competing in every event, for 2 solid hours. I hope we all survive

7pm-10pm

Game: Mega Man Unlimited

Player: Jonathan from the Mutant Musings Podcast.

Why it’s a pain in the ass: Mega Man Unlimited is a fan game that I am told is brutally hard. Jonathan requested to pay this game just a few days after the last PITAthon ended, and he’s been looking forward to it ever since. This is another game I can’t say I know a lot about, but when I asked Jonathan how much time he was going to need to play the game he requested 4 hours. So I gave him 3. What I’ve seen of this game looks awesome, so I’m looking forward to seeing him get through it. It’s designed to look and play like classic 8-bit Mega Man, and classic 8-bit Mega Man is known for its challenge.

10pm-12am

Game: The Lion King for SNES

Players: Dave and Cengiz from You Shall Not Pass Go

Why it’s a pain in the ass: This game was literally designed to be a pain in the ass. No, really! If you’ve ever played this game and gotten frustrated by how freaking hard the first couple of levels are (except the first one) that’s actually done by design. It was part of some bananas scheme to harm the rental market. Anyway, this game is tough, and if I remember correctly, neither Dave or Cengiz have ever beaten it before. They have just 2 hours to do so, and I suspect a sizable chunk of that time will be spent on the “I Just Can’t Wait to be King” stage.

12am-4am

Game: Zelda – Wand of Gamelon for Philips CD-i

Player: Kris (hello again) from the Stone Age Gamer Podcast

Ugh. This game. Most of the games we’re playing this year are tough, but good., This one’s a pain because it’s just an awful game. The controls are a complete mess, the game progression makes little to no sense, and it’s cutscenes are legendarily awful. I finished Link: Faces of evil last year, so I had to follow it up with its counterpart this year. I will be using a walkthrough like I did last year, but even with that on my side, it’s going to be a difficult task to get it done in the allotted time.

4am-5am

Game: Binding of Isaac

Player: SPECIAL GUEST Brandon from Interdimensional RSS: The Unofficial Rick and Morty Podcast

Why it’s a pain in the ass: Binding of Isaac is another game I don’t have any experience with, but as a fan of Super Meat Boy, I not only know that I’d probably love it if I played it, but if it’s anything like SMB it’s hard as heck. Our second special guest Brandon will be remoting in once again from Hawaii, and he will have just one hour to get as far into the game as he can. He will have a slight time advantage, since he will not have been up all hours of the night beforehand thanks to the time difference, but I’m confident Isaac is going to still be quite the challenge for him anyway.

5am-7am

Game: X-Men for Sega Genesis

Players: Patti from the Mutant Musings Podcast.

Why it’s a pain in the ass: I honestly don’t know if this game is known for its difficulty, but when I was a kid and it came out, I used to go to my neighbor’s house to play it and we could never properly figure it out. When we were making the schedule for this event, we had an opening in the 5-7am slot, and Patti volunteered to take it if I could find a good game for her to play. Since she’s the co-host of Geekade’s X-Men podcast, I offered her X-Men for Genesis and Spider-Man/X-Men for SNES. She’s never played either one, and she picked X-Men. I am so psyched to see her play this for the first time. I suspect there will be many curse words flung at the screen, especially considering how obtuse this game can be. Patti is pretty foul-mouthed as it is, so it’s going to be a good time.

7am-10am

Game: Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind for SNES

Player: Dean from Vest and Friends

Why it’s a pain in the ass: The grand finale. Dean and Bubsy go way back. He’s tried a few times to complete this game, and each and every time he has failed. Last year it was one of the final games of the marathon, and by the time his slot was over, he was a broken man. Bubsy and his one-liners had defeated him. This game gets a bad reputation as being worse than it is. In reality, it’s not a terrible game. But it’s certainly not a good one either. Bubsy is incredibly fragile, and the level design not only makes no sense a lot of the time, but it’s designed in a way that routinely kills you in completely unfair ways. Off-screen enemies and traps are positively everywhere, and there are few things that are more of a pain in the ass in video games than cheap deaths. It’s got bright, colorful graphics and a really good soundtrack, but don’t let them fool you. Bubsy is pain. Bubsy is Dean’s nightmare. And maybe this year, Bubsy is going down.

But wait! There’s more! Remember I mentioned an art auction? Well, during the marathon, there’s going to be an art auction with original video game themed art from some local area artists. You can check them out here, and bid to your heart's content. 100% of the proceeds will go toward our PITAthon goal, and the auctions will end during the PITAthon. So, if you’ve ever wanted a picture of Rick and Morty in the Fallout universe, you might just get your wish…

And that’s all there is to it. We will be bring a few extra games along in case we raise enough money to hit our stretch goals. Each hundred dollars we make past $1000, we will play for one more hour, up to 4 hours. So remember, Saturday August 5th at 10am, head over to www.twitch.tv/geekade and watch us suffer through this gauntlet of games, and while you’re at it, throw a few bucks toward the Colon Cancer Alliance. And one more thing! Stone Age Gamer has agreed to match our overall donations up to $1000 again this year, because they are awesome, so that’s going to go a long way toward us reaching our goal. (I want to hit $3000 this year). See you there!

#VIdeo Games #articles

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