"The Masks Are Coming Off"

That's what Roberta Gregory said after 2006's San Diego Comicon International.

I'm not naming names -- because I don't name names of my fellow creators unless it's something good for them -- but I watched a major talent and generous heart get bitch-slapped by a publisher. I'm not even naming the publisher, because even though the schmuck deserves it, I'm not giving said schmuck any publicity.

Not only did my colleague -- and by than I mean an artist or writer, not you low-life middlemen of any sort -- have to run to her publisher to beg to get a coffee break with two other artists she was dying to talk to after the con, like a little girl with her hands behind her back -- because said publisher paid for a lousy plane ticket and hotel room when said publisher should have been down on his goddamn' knees licking the dust before her dainty feet -- but the publisher looked down his nose at her and said that no other artists who she wanted to accompany her to this publisher's after-con get-together dinner could come because -- and I quote -- "This is a company dinner."

Company Dinner? You left-over blown-up fan boys think you're a bunch of high-powered CEO's now (and we won't get into how much those major gut-sucking parasites on an economy are actually worth)?

I've known this publisher for years. He's been pretty decent. He's said some good things about me and my work. I didn't so much mind, cuz I'm the industry weirdo. But to treat a major talent, who was there promoting a project she'd worked on so hard, like this -- to treat any creator like this -- the ENGINE of this stink-shoe industry -- well, now we've seen the worms behind the paper-mache'.

Note to you publishers and editors and other middlemen out there: HOW DARE YOU?

Just because the industry is starting to slide -- just because you have been paying absolutely no attention to the realities of the distribution changes in the entire publishing industry, not just ours -- you let your masks slip.

You're not our friends. You're just the flawed tools we have to work with to turn our creations into multiple copies. You're over-paid Xerox machines. Those little dinners you take us to, that you make us feel grateful for -- you shouldn't even be allowed in the banquet room. You should just serve the food and then bow out backwards, begging our pardon. If we kindly and nobly ask you to stay -- and we probably will, because artists and writers are kind and noble people -- you should find a place on a small stool down away below the salt, and confine yourself to listening in awe to creative people who shouldn't even have to breathe the same air as you, but do out of pure large-hearted magnaminity (and if the company won't pay because it's made so many stupid decisions that it can't afford to fly in artists, then you lower-echelon editors can just do without your beer money and pool for a plane ticket and hotel room).

I think we all remember Ben Afleck's entrance in Shakespeare In Love? You're just the money; be grateful you get to be a Patron Of The Arts. Watch and Learn.The only reason you think you're better than us is for the usual reason in any uncivilized, barbaric community that has no respect for the intellect. You pay for the art, so you think you own it. You should be grateful down to your bones that you're allowed the courtesy to support the artist -- that you even get to associate your name with the art -- that it gives you that kind of prestige.

If we're talking about money anyway, you don't even pay most artists and writers a decent wage. How often do we hear this crap: "Payment is a copy of the work, if you're lucky."? Some of you offer an ad page, which is at least an attempt, I'll give you that. But how far would it get you if you offered the printer or the post office or UPS or the warehouse the promist of one book in payment? When you're scraping up the cash for the project, why do you not factor in the people who actually did the work?

I'll tell you why -- Commie books are based on an American system. That system only works if there are cheap or free resources, and cheap and free labor. It does not work without subsidation, or cheap labor overseas, or free labor cornered into it, or shipped over chained in the holds of leaking ships.

And you think I'm being unrealistic? Did you look around the San Diego Comicon? Who was there? I'll tell you who: Hollywood. You think those guys can make a movie without paying the actors and the stunt people and the foley artists and the costumers and set-technicians and CGI and the caterers and security and legal and secretarial and the goddamn animal and baby wranglers? No, damnit, every single one of those people in those monster credit roles gets a paycheck. A goddamn deductible paycheck that has to be reported to the company accountant.

That's why the movie industry is huge. That's why commie books is nothing more than a rip-off engine with loose ends. That's why, once again, the artists and writers are beginning to do an end-run around the gatekeepers -- and when everybody runs around the fence and takes off on the other side, the only people left behind the gate are the keepers -- where they belong -- behind bars.

There's a globe-tipping tsunami coming for the entire publishing industry, and I'm talking all of it, not just our wienie little end of it. The wave isn't on the horizon yet, but the water is beginning to suck back. People who have boards -- like Amazon and Barnes and Noble and Lulu.com -- are going to surf just fine. Artists and writers all have catamarans and coolers. But the antique beach-crawling mammals with their 19th-century business methods, who insist on sending invoices on paper, who can't hook up anybody's account numbers, who have been resold five times in the past year, or who are scamming with a 20% price swing between the distributor's cut and the retailers, who are creaking with inflexibility their sales reps can't get past, no matter how many emails get exchanged -- well, let's just make their future accessible in terms for our industry:

All Diamond has is a cannonbal chained to its leg. And no cutting torch.

And now we present what we promised in the last article (and the one you're all waiting for, you bunch of hopeless sex fiends):

YOU FUCKING IDIOTS ARE NOT TO HIT ON YOUR COLLEAGUES AT A CONVENTION.

Certain guys at the convention need a heads up about proper industry etiquette.

A certain guy went out to lunch with me -- well, went out to a cup of iced coffee, because by that time San Diego was starting to swelter and nobody could eat, and when the girl in front of us ordered that and a glass of ice water, it's all we could think of -- and then he spent the entire hour doing a Beetlejuice imitation: "Lemme ask you, how tight are you with your husband? I mean, like do I have a shot or what?"

I was fucking flabbergasted. Like that's any of his fucking business, and if I'd consider going to bed with a broker (I mean, come ON. One shouldn't even SPEAK personally to a broker, except for business, and this one thinks I'll even THINK of spreading for his sorry ass?). I'm glad we were facing a nice cool dark corner or I'd have been embarrassed for him. A grown man acting like a half-witted high-school kid, for cripe's sake! Grow up, in Jesus H. Christ's name.

The night before, some drunk bisexual guy did the same thing, and wouldn't get his hands off me. The fact that I had some tequila in me and was grooving to the tunes at the Big Gay Dinner was the only thing that kept me from dumping the rest of my drink down his shirt. I don't remember his name, or it would be right here. God. It was like trying to relax while being stalked by a fucking octopus.

I mean, what is the fucking matter with these guys? First of all, I'm soon to be 54 years old, and I fucking look like it. What? They get off on old chicks? I backed these guys off repeatedly, and they would not take a hint. What are they? DEAF? A bunch of ex-fan-boys who think we go to conventions to get laid? Whoops, just answered my own question, didn't I? Hell, a lot of artists I know spend half the convention in the hotel rooms trying to hit project deadlines. With all the pages on the bed, there's no room for your dead fan-boy ass anyway.

This is a goddamn industry convention, you needle-brained dork wanna-be agents and editors. Oh, d'uh! Slaps forehead. Of course you are NOT my colleagues (see above). You're more useless middle-men. Artists and writers are, almost without exception, hard-working professional adults. Scratch the skin of any middle-man in this industry, and you have a loser with no social skills. You can stay in a hotel room with any number of artists of either sex and they'll respect your sleeping space and keep their armpit hairs off the deodorant. I can talk art and business for hours with my colleagues and not have anything worse than a moment's joking flirting (yes, I mean, you, Dave), because my colleagues have lives and know the limits and have manners (and in teeny Dave's case, I could pick him up under one arm and paddle his behind, but that would just make him giggle and ask for more). Middle-men must be orphans; they don't seem to have any of the social ability that any mother would have been able to teach them in less than five minutes.

The only reason somebody goes to lunch or a party with middle-men is because it's a networking convention, and it's 24-hour business contacts. We don't go to lunch with you because we think you're cute. Most of you are just NOT that cute. And from as much good as you do in this industry, you're not even that smart.

If you can't drink without hitting on people at conventions who are there to work, think about ordering that next Blue Slammer Martini. Or stay off the iced coffee -- you evidently can't even handle caffeine.

Comment on on the last article, from reader in Northern Ireland, Dave Sanders (NOT the Dave up there):

One of the most disparaging (sic) things I found recently was a supposed 'how to' book that dealt with capturing the trendy '50s retro' look. The 'lessons' that it taught - and oh GOD, I wish I was joking - was that 'traditional' (yes, they DID use that word) artistic concepts like body language and movement were old hat, and the manner in which your character performed an action was far more important than the action itself - it's all about attitude.In other words, you can draw as stiff as you like so long as you carry that all-important air of smugness. That's retro! *pfffft*

I'm beginning to hate the '50s retro' trend almost as much as I hate the American faux-anime one. Steal an artform, repackage and rebrand it into something it never was in the first place. It was fresh and novel when Genndy Tartakovsky revived the look with Dexter's Laboratory, it was zippy and energetic when Craig McCracken created the Powerpuff Girls. But now it's just bloody EVERYWHERE, and the manner in which it's being used as some kind of style statement just makes it look lazy and old.

'50s retro' was about attitude, or style, it wasn't even about the art; it was about SAVING MONEY. It was early TV amimation, for God's sake. Poor old Ralph Bakshi must be absolutely spitting, since it's exactly the sort of crap that he dedicated his entire adult career in trying to escape from. When he was a young hack, cleaning cels at the Terrytoons studio, it was considered the ass-end of the animation world (and then got progressively worse over the course of thirty years). So now comic artwork and animation is all about cutting as many corners as you can get away with, apparantly (no change there then)