"Those who can, do. Those who can’t, bitch about it on the Internet." -Simon, from The Book of Simon
Some bios list credentials, such as: Education BFA in Illustration, Massachusetts College of Art Occupation Former Production Slave, Ballantine Books Comics Credits Columnist, Writer, Artist, Editor Etc…
And some bios tell a story, such as: I can remember sitting in front of my television one morning, watching the old Batman show, when Julie Newmar appeared in that skintight black leather outfit as Catwoman. It was my first boy/girl thing. >A year later I was in kindergarten telling Katherine Burke that I loved her. It’s pretty much been a string of stupid mistakes ever since…
Still other bios state an intent, such as: This is a series of essays illustrating the life of one particular struggling artist as he plods through the world and occasionally bumps into some interesting shit.
But most bios just sit to the right of the column and are never looked at. So ignore this space and just read the damn column already…
Two years ago I was approached to do an eight-page comic for an anthology that was going to come out at San Diego ComiCon 2001. We had a cover, we had praise from a pro like Jamie Delano, we even had our own Delphi message board (but who doesn’t?). In the end, the only thing we never had was the actual comic. I chronicled the long story in a previous column. Just to sum up, I was one of the lucky ones who didn’t lose his money. But I never got the art back. I’d given it up as lost forever. That was, until a couple weeks ago…
A Manifesto Back in late 2000/early 2001 I was going through my Indy conversion. Just like any conversion, most of which include joining a cult, you end up taking yourself and your newfound ideas way too seriously. Once I moved to New York, for the first time in ten years I wasn’t able to afford a weekly visit to the comic book store, or even a monthly visit. I ended up working boring temp jobs, where I discovered just how much stuff is out there on the Internet. In place of my weekly comic fix I was soaking in a daily dose of webcolumns by people like Joe Casey, Warren Ellis, Steven Grant, and Larry Young. Somewhere along the way I got turned on to slice-of-life comics. Jessica Abel, Megan Kelso, Alex Robinson, Daniel Clowes, when I had money, these were the people whose work I picked up. They replaced names like Jurgens, Byrne, David, and Waid as my favorite creators. And yet, I still came from a superhero background.
So I ended up writing this bullshit manifesto one day, in between printing checks for $100,000 for a month’s hay supply for a horse and checks for donations to charitable organizations like private equestrian societies while I was working for the Rockefellers. I called it the Actualista Underground. The premise was to bring an understanding of ‘actual’ things to superhero comics. Really overusing the word actual, I called for realistic settings, dialogue, characters, situations, and somehow threw in stressing the use of graphic design in comics. At the time I saw this as the next evolutionary step. A variety of creators were doing each of these things separately and I had the bold notion to bring them all together and form the basis for the comic of the 21st Century.
Yes, I once bullshitted about how to save comics just like every other yahoo on the Internet. I once made grand proclamations about how I’d come up with ‘the solution’ and that my manifesto would revolutionize the industry. I even wrote out a bible to further explain my concept and provide the parameters through which an Acutalista comic could be created. Whatever. I had a lot of free time back then.
What came of the whole thing was a potential brand called Masks. It was a simple idea of focusing on the real lives of superheroes, treating them more like cops or firefighters, removing the sense of awe from comics. Basically I was attempting a celebration of the mundane. And it was all supposed to take place under this umbrella called Masks, which was the neighborhood bar that all the heroes drank at after work.
In the end, I got an eight-page comic called The Fame Jones out of the whole thing. Then I read one of Steven Grant’s columns about how crap manifestos were. With that, and all the trouble that resulted from the anthology, my interest in revolutionizing superhero comics disappeared. Just like the art for the one story I completed. But a month ago I got an e-mail from the guy who got everyone’s money and art back. He’d done some Spring-cleaning and happened upon my eight boards of art. Now that I have it back I figured I might as well show everyone what all the fuss was about.
Stuck In A Well For The Combustible Muse Anthology I chose one of my Masks stories. I was told by the organizer that mine would be the only even remotely superhero work in the book that year. But I assured him that there wouldn’t be any tights involved and that this was a different kind of superhero story. Plus, swearing! Indy guys always love the swearing.
I don’t know about the rest of the world, but anyone in America over the age of fifteen probably remembers a little thing called ‘Baby Jessica.’ For those who don’t, what happened was that a young baby fell down a well in Texas(?), I think. It turned into a big to-do with constant news coverage, around the clock updates, a huge crowd gathering at the site, and every other guy with a plan coming forward to explain how he thought they should try to get her out. Years later there was even a Simpsons episode based on the idea, in which Bart fakes falling down a well and Sting gets celebrities together to do a charity record called ‘We’re Sending Our Love Down The Well’. So, basically what I’m saying is, it was a big friggin’ deal.
Sometime between then and 2001, and I don’t know if this is true or not, I heard something about the man who carried Baby Jessica out of the well. That moment had made him an instant celebrity. His picture was on the cover of every major magazine carrying that baby to the ambulance, the heroic end to seemingly endless drama. He appeared on countless talk shows and news programs and showed his face at all the usual celebrity functions. For a good month or so, this average guy was everywhere. Of course, in the world of sensationalism as news, heroes have a short lifespan.
The story that I heard was that he soon found himself yesterday’s news. For some of us, that wouldn’t be so bad. We’d go back to our usual lives, having enjoyed a brief moment among the ‘special’ people. But according to the word that got to me, this guy had a harder time of it than most. Along the way from pulling a baby out of a well to being a guest on the Today show, he got addicted to the fame. He was like one of these reality show people who think they’re going to turn their fifteen minutes into something bigger. And, when it didn’t happen, he couldn’t deal with it. Celebrity had become like a drug, one he eventually decided he couldn’t live without. So he offed himself.
Now, like I’ve been going out of my way to stress, this is just the story I heard. For all I know, the guy is still alive, back at work in Texas, or maybe selling miniature wells and plastic baby dolls with his signature along the side of the road. For the sake of my comic it doesn’t really matter. It was more just this idea of how disposable we make our heroes that got to me. Even if the story was false, it didn’t take a great leap to see it as something that could happen. And that’s how I came up with The Fame Jones, the comic you will get to read starting next week.
I don’t want to give too much more away. I would like to mention that you should keep in mind that this was a comic I did two years ago. There are styles and tricks that I have since abandoned. It also happens to be the first real comic I’ve ever done. So, you should really just consider it step one in the ongoing evolution of a creator. Hell, I was even using the old pseudonym of Simon L. Morse back then. It was lettered using cutout text typed into Powerpoint and I even spelled Tourette’s syndrome wrong. But despite how primitive it seems to me now, I still think it’s a nice little story. And it makes me realize that I haven’t lost complete interest in making comics. Maybe somewhere down the road I’ll pick the pencil up again.
From The Monkey House a/k/a Simon Curses like a sailor
The Random: One thing I can’t stand is when television ‘journalists’ try to put a profound spin on war. Some news writer goes digging through their dusty collection of poetry they had to buy back in college and comes out with some pompous jackass talking about how giving your life to save another is the most ‘beautiful and noble’ way to die. Twisting those words to apply to a war is bullshit. Nobility aside, there is nothing beautiful about dying in a massive explosion, or having your guts torn to shreds by a spray of bullets. War is ugly and horrible and the worst thing mankind has ever created. Don’t go quoting poems and try making it sound like something it isn’t.
