pooperman!


Here's an old Teeny Weeny gag that Nickelodeon rejected. I can't decide if they were foolish to reject this or not. I think it's brilliant, but I can also see how it could be confusing. I'm posting it to entertain and pacify anybody who hates "CBR" jabber. If that is you, STOP READING NOW.

CBR jabber:
Here is Dave Sim's reply to my reply to him.

And here is my reply to that:

Um. I didn't ask you for a recommendation. I asked you to tell your local comic shop to order RUNAWAY. Is that risky for you? Does the comic shop gossip mill turn that into a recommendation?

I'm curious, seriously, because unbeknownst to you (apparently) you have recommended my comics. The FLOG entry on Fantagraphics website reads "Find out why so many cartoonists, from Scott McCloud to Jim Woodring to Dave Sim and Steve Bissette, love Martin's comics." I guess that's legal hearsay or something, since it's not a direct quote. Hell, I don't know how all this promo happens (other than my own little blog here, and the interviews I am arranging, and the release party I've arranged, April 15th, 1:00 - 4:00 pm, Modern Myths comics, Northampton Massachusetts, prizes and free Jeannie Cake if they'll allow cake in the store, which I am still not sure about, but will check on it!) I just stay back here and draw comics.

As for the task at hand, reinventing alternative comics infrastructure and tackling the reality that even Fantagraphics' own message board gets bombarded with people who'd rather chat about Endless Infinite X-Force Crisis than Harrison Cady... All I can say is God Bless you and Al and anybody else who can find the time to keep the dream alive. If there was/is any way I can actually do something constructive if and when something like the Mile High deal becomes something more than just cloud talk, I'd chip in. Probably all I could do would be show up as a warm body to offer moral support and a decent head-count. I'd even sit through an hour-long debate about whether we call comic books "product" if that's what it takes, but I'd bring something to draw on. I might have to step out for a cup of coffee while that debate raged, but I'd come back.

If I ever get around to a Tundra memoir it will be my views on what went wrong, and what went right at Tundra. There will be lots of creator-bashing in my story, as I recall lots of abuse and lots of attempts to rip the goose apart and grab the golden eggs.

Ah, good times.

OK. see ya!

5 comments:

eeTeeD said...

(places hands over mouth) must...keep...QUIET!

Mark Martin said...

Oh come on. RANT!

Anonymous said...

Ah Tundra...

The first time I met you in person (San Diego, early 90's), I think I was one of very few people there not looking for Tundra largesse. I remember realizing after talking to you that you must have been absolutely inundated with "propo$al$" and "$ub$mi$$ion$"...

I actually wound up having after dinner drinks w/ Kevin and Denis Kitchen a night or so later, had a pleasant conversation w/ Kevin until I mentioned my goal of scoring a big honkin' expensive SGI computer to do 3D comics, he glazed over and almost physically withdrew (which is tough to do without leaving your chair, but he did it). I really wasn't trying to get backing from him, but in retrospect I'll bet almost everyone he met was in those days.

Of course, I wasn't looking for Tundra employment 'cause I was very happy working for good ol' KSP... Little did I know that would vanish relatively soon!

eeTeeD said...

you asked for it! once upon a time, a loooooooooong time ago, a geek tried to open his own comic book shop. the shop was in a very bad part of town, and was approximately 30’x30’ in size. his inventory was just your typical junk that you could buy in any comic book shop. as i took a quick glance i heard him talking on the phone to his friend explaining how he was going to crush the area competition with his phone booth sized store with his thimble sized inventory.
i thought i’d buy a comic from him out of pity, but i just couldn’t find anything to buy. as i turned to leave he approached me and tried to get me to buy something. i said he didn’t have anything that interested me. he asked me what kind of comics i liked. i replied, “mostly humor.” to which he replied, “oh, then you’ll want to buy this CEREBUS comic, the CHAMPAGNE of humor comics!”
yes he really said that.
i replied that i didn’t really care for sim/cerebus. at which point an argument ensued.
the reason i don’t really want to rant about sim is because i know so little about him. i found him to an artist of modest talents. the thing about him that really set me off was when he decided to hire an assistant. did he hire someone to assist him with the business end of his comics career? no. did he hire some one to letter/rule borders/ and fill in blacks for him? no. he hired someone to do his backgrounds! yeesh. to me that was like one step away from hiring some one to do the whole thing and sign his name to it ala al capp!
further, he is a parody artist. to me parody is a lesser form of art. YES, it is a legitimate form of art. YES, i enjoy the work of many parody artists. Yes, i’ve even done parody work myself. but the thing is parody art is in a way cheating. what i mean is that the ORIGINAL artist did all the hard work. he created the characters, the story lines. the art style. he built up the fan base. then a parody artist comes along and simply taps into that by doing star DREK instead of star trek.
so my feeling is that if you are going to do parody art #1 you should have a really good reason to be doing it, and #2 you’d better be really good at doing it.
and sorry, but i just never saw a really good reason for sim to be doing his cerebus parody.
there are thousands of choices out there for the comic book consumer, but we consumers only have a limited amount of time and money to invest in this luxury item called comic books. if i have a choice of spending my comic book dollars on a collection of osama tezuka’s classic astro boy comics, or a lame parody of astro boy by a so/so artist, i’m obviously going to choose the former.
so i’m not a sim fan, and the less i hear about him/ know about him, the better! can’t we just leave him back in the 70’s where he belongs?

SRBissette said...

300 monthly comics in 30 years -- if nothing else, Dave and Ger deserve some respect for the enormity of their undertaking, and the fact that they DID it.

The Pooperman gag is fucking hilarious.