Author: Luke M.

Luke Matthews is a writer, board gamer, beer drinker, and all-around geek. He currently lives in the Seattle area with his wife, two cats, and two German wirehaired pointers.
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Formatting, and All That Jazz

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I cross-posted this article at ChroniclerSaga.com.

I am completely OCD about quality. Sometimes, that can be a bad thing. I have trouble releasing things I’m working on, especially artistic works. I’m fairly positive that this trait is what pulled me away from being an illustrator; I was never, ever satisfied with things I’d draw, and couldn’t accept the flaws in my work. When writing CONSTRUCT, this manifested itself in seven full drafts comprised of a ton of interim revisions. Had to be done.

Typos, bad formatting, terrible covers… ugh. Seeing that an author or a publisher has put absolutely minimal effort into their book’s aesthetic is off-putting, to say the least. A bit more can be forgiven in the case of self-published authors; it’s hard enough just jumping through the hoops to get the book released. But to see a minimally-formatted, slap-dash eBook from a major publisher is in-fucking-furiating.

kindle_screenshot_01The various distributors of eBooks have built systems that make it extremely easy to release your prose to the world. In developing a system centered on ease, however, they’ve sacrificed aesthetics. For the vast majority of self-published authors – and, for that matter, most big publishers translating physical copy to digital – that doesn’t matter. Ease is all that counts, and as long as the text is readable, who gives a damn how it looks?

I DO.

First and foremost, I wanted a traditional cover for my novel. The rise of Photoshopped stock images on book covers makes me die inside a little, especially for fantasy novels. I grew up on covers by Vallejo and the Hildebrandts, so I knew I’d never be satisfied with a $30 stock cover design or a Photoshop disaster. As you can see in the cover reveal I posted a couple of weeks ago, my cover artist Carmen absolutely nailed the artwork for this book, and I couldn’t be happier.

Like I said, I’m a quality nut. Once I’d made the decision to self-pub, I did a ton of research on eBook formatting, and how your formatting is affected by the various processing software provided by Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and others. The almost-universal opinion of the output of these services hovers somewhere around “Meh. It works, I guess.” But even with that feedback, many self-published authors see the output of those processors and just throw up their hands, giving in to whatever minor victories they can eke out of a shitty system.

kindle_screenshot_02I didn’t want to be hamstrung by what those companies could provide, so I delved into the process of doing the formatting myself. Details, details, details. I learned how to convert a manuscript on my own, using an open source eBook management program called Calibre. Even the output from Calibre was mediocre, mostly because it requires a ton of in-depth knowledge of Calibre’s settings and features, and how they interact with the input file. I was able to get a passable result, but nothing special. I began looking for a way to do my own tweaks. I have a reasonable knowledge of HTML and CSS, and eBooks are pretty much just self-contained HTML files. I found an eBook WYSIWYG editor called Sigil, and I was off to the races.

Sigil allowed me to alter the book at the code level, and I was in heaven. I was able to futz with every single little detail, burying myself in the minutia. Everything from the placement of chapter headings to indents to line spacing to the horizontal rule at the beginning of every chapter. I refined and tinkered the living shit out of the code for this book, and I think it shows in the finished product. On top of satisfying my OCD, it was just plain fun.

How a book looks when you’re reading is important. Typos and bad formatting detract from the reading experience. Everything about a book should melt into the background except for the words on the page, and every time you run across a misspelled word or an awkward paragraph break, it pulls you out of the immersion. Even if readers don’t actively notice the work I put into the formatting, I’ll be happy if they just don’t notice the formatting at all.

If it’s invisible, I’ve done my job.

CONSTRUCT, Book I of The Chronicler Saga, releases on September 18th for Kindle, Nook, and Kobo.

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Editing Is Not Adversarial

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This article has been cross-posted to ChroniclerSaga.com.

A couple of weeks ago, the hashtag #EditorAppreciationDay started on Twitter. It primarily centered around comic book editors at first, either having been a direct response to this article on Medium.com (which was originally titled “Why Image Comics Needs To Stop Demonizing Editors Now”) or simply having fortuitous timing. From my standpoint, the article is rather absurd; a blatantly knee-jerk reaction from an editor who was obviously wound up and poised to spew that response at his earliest opportunity.

But the article – primarily in its knee-jerk nature – serves to illustrate a related, but slightly different, point: Enough arrogant, uneducated douchewaffles shit on editors that many of them have built up the same sort of auto-spew defense system which sent Mr. Kwanza on his tirade (I call it a tirade more due to the lack of inciting incident than the body of the espoused sentiment).

I encountered this issue most poignantly when I posted a comment on Chuck Wendig’s blog over at Terribleminds.com a few months ago. The discussion was about self-publishing, and the comments turned toward the subject of editing. Chuck made a comment about being able to find inexpensive editing services, or possibly finding editors who will trade their services. When I asked if he knew where I might find editors within my price range, another commenter butted in with the following:

“By editing, are we talking book doctors, or proofreaders? Frankly, if you need someone else to tell your story, you aren’t much of an author in my opinion. Nobody went back over Pcaso’s work and fixed his brush strokes. Indies may not be masters, but they should be able tomprovide abuyabke product on their own or they’re not very independant in my mind.”

[All errors in the above text are in the original post. Oh, the irony.]

Guys like this, unfortunately, are the people who put editors like Kwanza on the hyper-defensive. The arrogance of a stance like this is staggering, and is shared by far too many independent authors. The “gatekeeper” narrative has been threaded through so much of the self-publishing community that many authors have wrong-headedly learned to take the idea of editing as an affront to their creative freedom. As a lifelong artist – in some vein or another – I’m baffled by this attitude.

Any artist worth their salt will tell you everyone suffers from “art-blindness”. You work on a piece for so long – could be a sculpture or a painting or a manuscript – you become blind to many of its faults. For every one you catch, two will slip past, because you’ve been staring at the thing so damned much everything just seems normal, even if it’s not.

Before I sent my manuscript to beta readers, a friend of mine did a pretty extensive proofread, and tore it apart. When I sent the 3rd draft to beta readers, they tore it up, too; they found all kinds of issues. When I finished the post-beta-read revision – the 4th draft – I sent it off to my story editor, and she tore it up. The story edit resulted in my 5th draft, and I did a 6th draft before sending it off to the copyeditor, because I’m anal. The copyeditor tore it up.

Seven extra pairs of eyes on my manuscript, and every single one of them found faults. And not faults I would consider some sort of subversion of my creative vision (whatever the fuck that means), but faults causing me to say to myself “Holy shit, I can’t believe I missed that.” My story editor, Annetta Ribken, not only helped me unify the language in my dialogue and shave away excessive prose (I’m a wordy bitch), but she found weak spots in my plot which, had they been left in place, did a disservice to the rest of the story.

See, writing a book is hard. It requires constant, relentless critical thinking, and sometimes you’re not on your A-game. There were points in my plot even I felt were weak, but after cranking out 130,000 words and revising them three times, I looked at those passages as “good enough”. Until Annetta got ahold of it. When someone else looks at a piece of art you’ve decided is “good enough” and, in a professional capacity, tells you “It’s not good enough.”, you damned well best take note.

It’s not to say Annetta and I didn’t disagree sometimes. There were points of contention I argued for. There were changes she suggested I didn’t make. But in every single case, when she told me something needed changing, I had to argue with myself long before I started arguing with her. I had to take a critical look at every single edit and say “Is this up to my standards?” In most cases, I had to agree it was not, and had to look within myself to find a way to elevate it.

The same was true of my copyeditor, Jennifer Wingard. I learned more about the mechanics of prose from her copyediting passes than through anything else I’d done over the two years I spent writing the manuscript. I learned what my crutch words were (“that” and “was” need to be burned with fire), I learned the repetitive mistakes I make in sentence construction, and I learned no matter how many times I read over the same manuscript, I’m never going to find every extra space or misplaced quote or incorrect punctuation. I learned that “blonde” has a very specific meaning, different from “blond” (while seemingly basic, I had no idea).

And yet, through both of these collaborations, I never once felt like I wasn’t in control of my manuscript. At no point did the editing process feel as though either of my editors were trying to steer my story or fuck with my voice. You know why? Because that’s the whole point of being an editor. They’re there to make your work better – to make it more you. A good editor looks at your prose and works with you to find ways to solidify it without tinkering with what makes it yours.

And I learned so much. Probably the most amazing thing about working with these two wonderful women: I markedly improved my knowledge and execution of my craft because of these collaborations. There is no better way to become a better writer than to have a professional constructively deconstruct your prose. Which is why it’s such a damned shame there are so many authors out there with such an adversarial view of editing and, by extension, so many editors who’ve built this ablative armor against even the smallest hint of a slight against their profession.

Editing is not subversive or adversarial. If it is, you either a) found a really god-awful editor, or b) desperately need to get your ego in check. In most cases, it’s probably the latter.

If you’re in need of a substantive story edit, check out Annetta Ribken over at www.wordwebbing.com. Her edits are geared toward continuity and plot, and are well worth your time.

For a hardcore mechanical copyedit, get in touch with Jennifer Wingard at www.theindependentpen.com. You’re probably doing everything wrong, and she’ll show you how to do it right.

I highly recommend the services of both. They had a phenomenal impact on CONSTRUCT, and I couldn’t be happier with the result.

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Uggghhh… BOOK… Fgngn

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I… wow. I am… ffffff… In… jesus… I have a… UUUUUUUUUU…

That’s about how I feel right now. For the last year and a half, I’ve been single-mindedly occupied with pulling together my first novel, CONSTRUCT. I finished writing it in 2013, finished revising it later that year, and have spent the last 6 months working with two editors and a cover artist to bring the whole thing to fruition.

During that process I’ve also been building a website, setting up publishing accounts on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords, registering ISBNs, setting up a bank account, and pulling together the business side of getting it released into readers’ hands.

And it’s finally all coming together.

Tomorrow – August 12th, 2014 – I’ll be launching the website with my release date announcement and cover reveal. It’s a real thing now. It’s not just a time-sink, or a hobby, or a diversion anymore. It’s a full-fledged novel. A real, live book that people can read and review and shit all over on the internet. And I’m still having trouble believing that it’s anything other than a stupid personal project that’ll never see the light of day.

But tomorrow’s the day that I commit to making it real.

I just… I mean… fuguuugugug… It’s… hnnnnnnnh… I can’t…

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Text Is Locked on Construct

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Well, it’s finally done. Back in 2013, I wrote a post about how I finished writing a whole book. Today, after seven full drafts encompassing numerous major revisions and a pruning of over 18,000 words, the text for my debut novel CONSTRUCT is locked down. Finalized. Gone Gold. Finito. DONE.

I started writing CONSTRUCT in December of 2010, about a year after the death of my father. The death of my parents within three years of one another was a rough reminder of how quickly our time on earth can come to an end. After spending many years with the core idea of CONSTRUCT bouncing around in my brain, I decided to finally get it out of my head and down on paper. Well, into Word, anyway.

I only had about 8,000 words into it before things stalled in 2011. I was still motivated to continue, but wasn’t making the proper time to get it out the door. After seeing several people I know participating in that year’s NaNoWriMo, I decided to use their writing sprint rules to force myself into adding on to it, fleshing out my ideas.

It was a success. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a 50,000 word novel, front to back, entirely within the month of November. I didn’t quite follow the rules – I was adding on to a longer piece instead of creating a standalone – but the “competition” did drive me to add over 48,000 words that month, and put myself in a position where I could no longer reasonably just give up. I’d come too far.

It took me quite a while to finish the book. At about 70,000 words, I found I’d written myself into a corner, which forced a pretty major re-write. I eliminated a character, changed another, and killed an entire potential plotline. It was a rough re-write but it put me back on track, and I was moving forward again in no time.

I spent the better part of 2012 writing at a pretty languid pace, writing when inspiration came to me and when time permitted rather than forcing myself into a schedule. While it was a leisurely way to get it done, it didn’t force any discipline on me, and I let other things intrude on thought-space I should have been applying to the novel.

It was 2012, and the writing done within it, that solidified my desire to keep writing; the realization of my potential to make a real go at getting this story into the hands of readers, and extending it into the series I always knew I wanted it to be. I wanted to devote myself to it. My job very kindly obliged my desires by wearing on me, becoming more frustration than fun. So, after some long discussions with my wife and hand wringing and anxiety, I left my long-time posting at Nintendo to pursue writing full-time at the end of February, 2013.

On March 13th, I finished the first draft.

Looking back on it now, it’s pretty fucking terrible. But that’s what revisions are for. By August I had finished the 3rd draft, and after a few months in the hands of beta readers, I pumped out a 4th draft in January of this year. I shopped around for editors and, upon finding one within my price range, spent two weeks fixing up the 5th draft before sending it off. Which, I know, is kind of like cleaning up your house before the maid service shows up, but that’s just the way I roll.

The 5th draft went into the hands of Annetta Ribken, an independent developmental editor over at Wordwebbing.com. She took some hard swipes at the story I’d written, and helped hack into the bits where I’d faltered. There were so many places where I’d been vague, or just stupid, or worse: lazy. She never let me be lazy. Annetta helped me to clarify the bits that needed clarification, and forced me to re-work areas that I should never have let go. Places where I’d said “Bah, whatever. This’ll be fine.” were the exact spots she pointed out, saying “Come on. You can do better.” And, with her help, I think I really did.

After four passes with Annetta, the story locked in place, the book went to Jennifer Wingard at TheIndependentPen.com for the copyedit. I learned more about the technical bits of this craft from her editing pass than I think I did over the entire two previous years of actual writing. I finally learned how passive voice manifests itself in my writing, and I learned how that and was are crutch words for me that I need to burn with fire. More clarifying, more trimming, a few more re-writes.

These two women have had a humongous impact on my first novel. The first draft is hard for me to read now. It’s hard for me to imagine that at one point, those words came through my keyboard and I thought they were good. Annetta and Jennifer not only showed me where I was wrong in that assessment, but showed me that I’m capable of doing better, and for that I can’t thank them enough.

And now, it’s done. Almost four years and seven drafts later, my debut novel is a wrap.

Now the real work begins.

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Image Comics’ Perfect Hardcovers

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revival_cover_inlineI just received my copy of the Revival Deluxe Edition hardcover in the mail, and it has let me to this major conclusion: this is the perfect way to read comics.

Now, when I say “perfect”, of course I mean “perfect for me”. Other people have other tastes, like floppies or digital or Absolute editions. But for me, Image Comics has pretty much hit the nail on the head with their standard hardcover book design. What are the elements that make these books perfect?

Ten to twelve Issues. This is a perfect number. Most modern comic books run in 5-6 issue story arcs nowadays, especially at non-Big-2 companies like Image and Oni. A 12-issue hardcover trade usually covers two story arcs, roughly a year of the book. It’s a perfect slice for a day or two of reading, and makes it easy to have an annual release schedule for hardcovers. Image’s books bear this out with long-running series like The Walking Dead and Invincible.

No dustjackets. I’m an outspoken opponent of dustjackets on pretty much any book. Ostensibly, they’re designed to “protect” the underlying book by taking damage in lieu of the actual cover. That’s totally fine if I’m in 5th grade and my dustjackets are hand-made from a grocery bag. But from a collector’s standpoint, the dustjackets are just another component that contributes to the overall condition and can become damaged, and much more easily than the actual hardcover of a trade. On top of that, it they’re awkward and cumbersome when trying to read, so I end up just taking them off when reading anyway. If the dustjacket was supposed to protect against fingerprints, the purpose is already defeated. TL;DR version: fuck dustjackets.

Consistent spine and cover design. I cannot stress enough how important this is for OCD comic book collectors like me. When I’ve shelved a long-running series, I absolutely Can. Not. Stand. when the spine design changes. It looks so damned sloppy. Marvel and DC are terrible culprits in the inconsistent spine design arena. Image, on the other hand, has kept the cover design and spine design for long-running series identical, even if it might not be the best (as is the case with Invincible). And that’s all that matters to me. I don’t give a flying fuck if the newer covers are more appealing to focus groups or fit some change of theme – just keep them the same.

$30 to $35 cover price. What a spectacular price for what you get. The overall price of the trade ends up being cheaper than floppies, and in return you get (in my opinion) more value in a sturdy, looks-awesome-on-a-bookshelf hardcover. I don’t have to bag-and-board it, and they’re more durable than most softcover trades (I find a lot of softcovers to have less-than-stellar quality control). Most hardcovers of this size fall into this price point, with a few exceptions like the 100 Bullets Deluxe Editions, which clocked in at $50 a pop. Marvel seems to have moved toward releasing 5-6 issue hardcovers (like All-New X-Men) for $25. Half the content for 85% of the price? Yeowch. And yes, I know they’re cheaper on Amazon, but we’re discussing SRP’s here.

fear_agent_cover_inlineAll of these factors lead to my perfect reading conditions. Twelve issue hardcovers are easy to handle and read, unlike Absolute editions or Omnibi. While I absolutely LOVE the production design on books like my Fear Agent Library Editions or The Sixth Gun Gunslinger Edition, their sheer size does make them a bit hard to handle. The lack of dustjackets means I get a beautifully designed cover (the cover on this Revival book is *fantastic*) without the pain-in-the-ass of having to fumble with or outright remove an annoying wrapper. And at these prices, why would I want to pay $40 to $48 for the floppies, or even similar prices for softcovers, especially when even my comic shop gives a decent discount off of cover on trades?

Image just nails it. Other companies have followed suit in design, but not in price: IDW’s collection of The Cape looked spectacular, but was $50; the same goes for Icon’s Criminal collections. I wish that everyone would adopt the same size, style, and price as Image’s hardcover collections, because if they did, I would never read comics any other way.

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Image Comics’ Perfect Hardcovers

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revival_cover_inlineI just received my copy of the Revival Deluxe Edition hardcover in the mail, and it has let me to this major conclusion: this is the perfect way to read comics.

Now, when I say “perfect”, of course I mean “perfect for me”. Other people have other tastes, like floppies or digital or Absolute editions. But for me, Image Comics has pretty much hit the nail on the head with their standard hardcover book design. What are the elements that make these books perfect?

Ten to twelve Issues. This is a perfect number. Most modern comic books run in 5-6 issue story arcs nowadays, especially at non-Big-2 companies like Image and Oni. A 12-issue hardcover trade usually covers two story arcs, roughly a year of the book. It’s a perfect slice for a day or two of reading, and makes it easy to have an annual release schedule for hardcovers. Image’s books bear this out with long-running series like The Walking Dead and Invincible.

No dustjackets. I’m an outspoken opponent of dustjackets on pretty much any book. Ostensibly, they’re designed to “protect” the underlying book by taking damage in lieu of the actual cover. That’s totally fine if I’m in 5th grade and my dustjackets are hand-made from a grocery bag. But from a collector’s standpoint, the dustjackets are just another component that contributes to the overall condition and can become damaged, and much more easily than the actual hardcover of a trade. On top of that, it they’re awkward and cumbersome when trying to read, so I end up just taking them off when reading anyway. If the dustjacket was supposed to protect against fingerprints, the purpose is already defeated. TL;DR version: fuck dustjackets.

Consistent spine and cover design. I cannot stress enough how important this is for OCD comic book collectors like me. When I’ve shelved a long-running series, I absolutely Can. Not. Stand. when the spine design changes. It looks so damned sloppy. Marvel and DC are terrible culprits in the inconsistent spine design arena. Image, on the other hand, has kept the cover design and spine design for long-running series identical, even if it might not be the best (as is the case with Invincible). And that’s all that matters to me. I don’t give a flying fuck if the newer covers are more appealing to focus groups or fit some change of theme – just keep them the same.

$30 to $35 cover price. What a spectacular price for what you get. The overall price of the trade ends up being cheaper than floppies, and in return you get (in my opinion) more value in a sturdy, looks-awesome-on-a-bookshelf hardcover. I don’t have to bag-and-board it, and they’re more durable than most softcover trades (I find a lot of softcovers to have less-than-stellar quality control). Most hardcovers of this size fall into this price point, with a few exceptions like the 100 Bullets Deluxe Editions, which clocked in at $50 a pop. Marvel seems to have moved toward releasing 5-6 issue hardcovers (like All-New X-Men) for $25. Half the content for 85% of the price? Yeowch. And yes, I know they’re cheaper on Amazon, but we’re discussing SRP’s here.

fear_agent_cover_inlineAll of these factors lead to my perfect reading conditions. Twelve issue hardcovers are easy to handle and read, unlike Absolute editions or Omnibi. While I absolutely LOVE the production design on books like my Fear Agent Library Editions or The Sixth Gun Gunslinger Edition, their sheer size does make them a bit hard to handle. The lack of dustjackets means I get a beautifully designed cover (the cover on this Revival book is *fantastic*) without the pain-in-the-ass of having to fumble with or outright remove an annoying wrapper. And at these prices, why would I want to pay $40 to $48 for the floppies, or even similar prices for softcovers, especially when even my comic shop gives a decent discount off of cover on trades?

Image just nails it. Other companies have followed suit in design, but not in price: IDW’s collection of The Cape looked spectacular, but was $50; the same goes for Icon’s Criminal collections. I wish that everyone would adopt the same size, style, and price as Image’s hardcover collections, because if they did, I would never read comics any other way.

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Floppies, Trade-Waiting, and Guilt

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For the last few months, I’ve been in the midst of a dilemma.

I’m a huge comic book fan. I read a ton of books – almost all of which come from Image right now. I have a list of subscriptions at my local comic shop, and about every six months or so, I’ll pick up a hardcover trade collecting the very issues I subscribe to. With the number of books I read and like, I’m usually picking up a couple of trades every month, and that’s not including back-catalog stuff that comes out in a format I like.

It’s getting expensive. Pretty much everything I read now has a $3.99 cover price. And now, with the July solicits from Marvel, a number of their books are pushing upward to a $4.99 cover price. If this price increase takes hold on a wide scale, it will officially price me out of buying single comic issues.

My dilemma, though, is trying to figure out whether that’s actually a problem or not.

Over the last several years of hosting the Trade Secrets Podcast, my on- and off-air conversations with my cohorts on the show have taught me a lot about myself as a comic consumer. One of the biggest revelations is that I don’t really enjoy consuming comics in serial form. If it were up to me, monthly comics wouldn’t exist, and everything would be a 12-issue hardcover collection.

But see, the business model of the comic book industry makes that untenable. Like ratings for a TV show, a comic book’s success or failure is solely determined by monthly sales. If a book doesn’t sell enough copies, it gets canned, which means that it’s even less likely that the hardcover trades I love so much will even get produced. And, even worse, a canceled book never gets to finish telling the story that it set out to tell.

The entire industry, from publisher to distributor to local comic shop, is based around these monthly sales. I can get a discount at my LCS as long as I maintain a certain number of monthly subscriptions, which helps me when I want to buy trades. A 20% discount on trades keeps my comic shop competitive with Amazon, on most accounts, and when all things break equal I’d rather support my shop.

The issue (ha ha) is that I don’t want to get singles anymore. My problem with floppies is three-fold: 1) they’re fucking expensive – I currently spend about $60 a month on single issues, and that total has been as high as $150+, 2) I’m effectively getting double-dipped by buying single issues and then invariably buying a hardcover collection, and 3) it’s just not the way I like to consume the stories anymore.

Why is it a problem? Because the entire industry and comic community is built around making me feel guilty for not buying individual issues. I’m inundated with tales of how my favorite book will get canceled if I don’t buy it monthly, and how my comic shop relies on those monthly sales and orders to stay afloat. I’ve seen fans and creators alike use the term “trade-waiter” as a pejorative.

Not only this, but the business model at the LCS level doesn’t support – from a financial perspective – my desire to read books in trade form. If I were to cancel my subscription box, I’d lose most (maybe all?) of my discount on other items – namely trades. I can’t set up a subscription box solely for trades (holy hell that would be fucking fantastic). So, by not subscribing to the floppies, my comic shop is basically driving me to buy my trades on Amazon or CheapGraphicNovels, where I can get a 30%-50% discount.

That’s nothing to sneeze at. The average hardcover – my preferred format – costs me between $30 and $50. Getting $8-$10 off of a $30 trade when I’m buying 2 or 3 a month rounds out to a huge cost savings for me in the long run. And, if I’m not getting double-dipped anymore by being forced to buy floppies, I end up saving myself – quite literally – over $1,000 a year.

But that’s not what the industry wants me to do, and even though comic companies make a significantly heftier margin on trades than monthlies, the majority of the community would have me believe that the industry would fall apart if everyone wanted to consume comics the way I do. Hence the guilt-trip.

On the one hand, I absolutely love my comic shop. I love buying things from them, I adore the people who work there, and I really enjoy the time I spend there. On the other hand, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for me to afford the associated cost of maintaining the industry status-quo. I’m broke, and single issues are just too damned expensive for me now.

And I think I’ve reached a breaking point. All the guilt is making me tired, and I’ve realized that I don’t like feeling this way. When I think about all the parts of being a comic fan – from reading and talking about comics to attending conventions to spending time at my comic shop – I’ve come to the conclusion that the only part that’s massively important to me are the stories. I want to read comics, and I want to read them my way – which, for me, means shifting to trade-only consumption.

I’m not sure when I’ll pull the trigger on changing my buying habits. I’ve been babbling about it for months, but there are still several books that I’m sort of “in the middle of” when it comes to individual issues, and I don’t want to give up on them yet. But soon, it’ll be time to give up on floppies, and leave that side of the industry to other fans.

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Authors vs. Authors

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Being new to the whole “publishing a novel” thingy, I’m still and repeatedly baffled by the “trad-pub vs. self-pub” battle lines. Ever since I began querying agents, not a week has gone by that I haven’t seen one side condescend to the other and/or blow a gasket over perceived condescension. It’s simultaneously entralling and baffling.

The most fascinating thing about the whole debate is that 99% of the time, the humongous corporations that “back” either “side” sit back and say nothing, while the individual authors go at each other’s throats like roosters in a cock-fight. The popular voice of traditionally published authors decries self-publishing and berates Amazon as an evil, monopolistic giant, while the popular voice of author-publishers rails against the draconian, iron-fisted author-shafting of the Big 5 Publishers.

What amazes me the most is that no one really sees how alike these arguments have become. None of these authors seem to take note of how individual authors aren’t only putting down one another for their choice of publishing path, but rushing to the defense of *multi-billion dollar corporate entities*. News flash: Corporations don’t give a flying fuck about individuals.

One of the most common condescensions is to put down an author’s choice by “warning” them against how badly screwed they could be by the machine they’ve shackled themselves to. And the arguments sound so fantastically alike, that I just watch and wonder if authors in these arguments realize they’re making the exact same argument from only slightly different angles.

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Review: Southern Bastards #1

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I grew up in the Pacific Northwest. My exposure to the rest of the United States has been limited, mostly to vacations and short road trips. I’ve spent my entire life in Oregon and Washington, so I am keenly attuned to the quirks and flow of Northwest life. It’s a strange little place.

southern_bastards_review_01Almost all of my exposure to life in the deep South comes from fiction and media. I don’t have a lot of friends from there, and even my family primarily comes from the Midwest, although my dad spent a lot of time in New Mexico (New Mexico is it’s own, oddball world, though). The vast majority of southern fiction depicts a strange place, simultaneously intricately woven into the core American landscape and yet fundamentally separated from it. It’s a place of bible-thumpers and redneck gun-nuts and croc wrestlers and high-school football and barbecue. A place that rumbles a primal fear in as many people as romanticize it.

A place that the two Jasons – Aaron and Latour – are intimately familiar with.

That familiarity oozes into the atmosphere of their new Image book Southern Bastards. The story of Earl Tubb’s return to his home in Craw County, Alabama after forty years away bleeds that atmosphere, that knowledge, from every word bubble and every line. Aaron doesn’t hit you over the head with over-the-top vernacular, instead just sprinkling in the flavor of everyday speech – a man that still calls his father “daddy”; a waitress who calls her customer “hon”. It’s nice to see a depiction of rural southern speech that isn’t a caricature; the same deep yokel-speak that’s peppered through a lot of fiction set there.

Latour uses a deft touch in representing Craw County in a way that makes it feel unique. Much like the dialogue, there’s just enough flavor to show us the environment without feeling like a pastiche: a post-clock across from the brick facades of the town’s main street; the wood-panel siding surrounding the order window at the local barbecue joint; the muted greens and browns of a countryside that looks decidedly unfamiliar to someone like me, a born-and-bred Pacific Northwesterner.

southern_bastards_review_02Earl’s homecoming is an uncomfortable one, a man returning to the place he’d grown up, now as much outsider as native. It’s a theme Jason Aaron is comfortable with, having honed his voice on his Eisner-nominated series Scalped. He pulls from that same well to give Southern Bastards it’s tension, the tightening-noose feeling of a man who just has a simple thing to do in a place he never wanted to be getting dragged into a situation he should’ve avoided all along.

Earl Tubb is part Ed Tom Bell, part Buford Pusser, and if this first issue tells us anything, it’s that things are going to get a lot worse for him before they get better. Aaron’s trademark slow-burn tension is well complimented by Latour’s oppressive, almost claustrophobic atmosphere. In the few words that Earl Tubb utters during this first issue he’s somehow already endeared to us, with such economy and subtlety that, by the time the issue is over, the hooks are set deep.

I have a lot of faith in Aaron’s storytelling capabilities. And, I’ll say it: I think his collaboration with Jason Latour has the makings of an even better partnership than what he had with R.M. Guerra. If you’re looking for a fine piece of Southern noir, and something completely different from any other book you’re reading right now, go pick up Southern Bastards.

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No, Dude, You’re the Problem

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Comic books have had a long, hard road toward the success and popularity they enjoy today. I’ve been a comic book fan since I was a little kid – almost thirty years. I’ve seen the way the industry has grown and changed, and been through the ringer for my fandom. I’ve been jeered at, insulted, and generally ostracized for being into comic books.

Finally, now, after all those years, comics have reached a popularity that most of us never thought possible. As a kid I fully expected to spend the rest of my life ashamed of my hobby or angry at the attitudes directed at me. A world where the medium was never taken seriously, and where any adaptations of my favorite characters were Troma-level throwaways or spoofs. To live in a world where comic-book conventions regularly sell out huge venues and the highest grossing movies of our time are based on those characters is a fucking wonderland.

And then, in a listicle published on a site called WhatCulture by author Kev Stewart, this bullshit comes along:

cool_comic_fans

First off, let me say that I don’t put a hell of a lot of stock in these sorts of lists, especially on sites like Distractify or WhatCulture or Buzzfeed. Almost all of the “…only [blank] would understand.” articles read like they were written by someone who wouldn’t qualify for the target audience of the article, and who found most of their arguments via an cursory Google search. This one is no different.

But this #1 on the list really has it’s misrepresentation cake and eats it too. Let me start by addressing the premise of the list and this entry’s place on it:

23 Problems Only Comic Book Readers Will Understand

(My emphasis)

Without addressing any of the other issues with this entry, I ask: Why on Earth would a long time comic book fan see the growing mainstream popularity of our favorite entertainment medium as a “problem”? The integration of comic books into widespread popular culture means that fans of the medium will have everything we’ve always wanted: more money in the industry, better adaptations, more consideration of comics as serious entertainment, and – best of all – more people to talk to about it. Why would this be a bad thing?

Growing up, most comic book readers have been mocked, laughed at and outright abused by those around them for being “geeks” and “nerds”

Yes, you’re right: many of us were mocked and derided for our interests by people who didn’t know better. Much of that derision came from a place of ignorance – as it frequently does. Mainstreaming comic books means that more people know more about the stories that we love so much, which leads to – guess what – less ignorance and likely less ridicule. A kid nowadays has more access to more comics in more forms than any of us ever did, and can indulge in that hobby with more confidence than ever. I’m not saying that the insults and mockery have stopped, but a modern comic fan has way more arguments for the validity of their interest in the eyes of a mainstream heckler than ever before.

Either way, after years of the aforementioned abuse, to see hot girls dressed as comic book characters, Marvel and DC characters appearing on fashionable clothing items in high street stores and actors and celebrities almost relentlessly proclaiming their love of specific comic books is something of a bummer for those who have been fans and readers of comics for years.

My god, this reads like satire. Is this supposed to be some weird hipster irony bullshit? All of the things mentioned are blatant positives, but there’s one thing in particular I want to talk about, and that is the author’s attempt to shame people for liking comics. This whole list item, and most of the article, smacks of the same “fake geek girl” crap that we’ve seen crop up in the last several years, and it’s horseshit.

This paragraph serves no purpose but to perpetuate the same comic book nerd stereotype that used to force comic book readers into some sort of fan closet in the first place. To insinuate that because a woman is attractive or an actor is popular their love of comics is somehow “less than” is infuriating. This same kind of nerd-shaming is what kept fans from outwardly expressing their fandom for years, and made us feel like outcasts in the first place. The popularization of comic books has led to a) long-time fans being able to “come out”, as it were, with far less risk of ridicule and b) legitimized the hobby in the eyes of many, thus drawing in brand-new fans. Explain to me, again, why any of this would be a “bummer”?

and yet now it’s suddenly cool to be associated with comics.

“Suddenly”? Within the comic book industry, attempts to legitimize the sequential artform have been occurring since long before I was a fan; long before I was born. Only once the artform itself began to be recognized as something beyond just “funny-books” could the legitimization of its fandom begin. The shift from nerd-hobby to mainstream success has been in the making for decades, so espousing the idea that this shift is even remotely “sudden” destroys whatever marginal credibility this author had with me in the first place.

Lists like this are, ostensibly, meant to draw nodding approval from those “in the know” in that “it’s funny ’cause it’s true” sort of way. The first one I ever saw was a list of “things only introverts will understand”, and that archetype quickly exploded to cover every single niche in society from “feminists” to “short guys” to “movie nuts” to “women with small breasts”. Most of these sorts of list miss the mark at least a little bit, but I’ve never before encountered one that ended on such an irritatingly off-key note as this one.

To steal a phrase that’s been going around the internet lately: Comics Are For Everyone. To try and shoehorn it back into some unwelcoming, elitist, nerd-hobby that shuns someone because they don’t meet some sort of arbitrary “cred” actually works to harm all of the work that’s been done to bring comics to the forefront. New fans and the mainstreaming of comics aren’t the problem, Kev – you are.