Top panel, L-R: Joe Casey, mainstream comics

I’ll tell you what else… I’m actually seeing things in [work for hire] comics now that I was doing seven or eight years ago. Not just techniques, but actual ideas. I love me some Fraction, but seeing that Tony Stark wants to “change the world” by manufacturing a car that isn’t dependent on gasoline and runs on a possibly limitless energy source that only he can provide… where have I seen that before? Grant Morrison, of all people, had the confidence and the grace to name check me in a Wired magazine interview when it comes to whatever minor contribution I’ve made to the “corporate” angle in modern comics, but he seems to be the only one. And there are other little things I see here and there that I recognize as having done myself, ten years ago. Things that are so specific, I know where they came from, I know it’s not just coincidence. Now before certain people go crazy because I dared say that… no one should read this as me being at all bitter, because I actually think it’s fine. Let ‘em all pick at the bones of the carcasses I chased down and slaughtered in the field… I’m on to the next kill. I certainly did it with the creators that I dug when I was a newbie. It’s just weird to be on the other side of it. Any creators out there who don’t think we all share the same ideaspace are deluding themselves.

But, y’know, it all adds up to one thing for me, personally… mainstream comics have become so boring that I can barely stand it. There are a few exceptions. Morrison‘s work still gives me a helluva charge, Allan Heinberg‘s a favorite (when he’s able to carve out the time to write comics), but it’s mostly lot of insanely talented creators at Marvel and DC and elsewhere just boring the shit out of me as a reader and as a fan of comics. I hope that doesn’t come across as a slam on anyone’s work, that’s just my honest reaction to a lot of what’s out there right now. Most of it, I’ve seen it all before. Some of it, I’ve done myself…! But more than anything, that’s what gets me off my ass to bust out a plethora of creator-owned material… to try and shake things up a little. Maybe I’ve done it before, to varying degrees — I guess that’s a matter of opinion — but I’m more than a little curious whether or not it’s possible to do it again with these new books. On a pure showmanship level, I’m calling out all of the comic book-creatin’ motherfuckers stuck out there in the mainstream wilderness… saying, “Let’s put some swing back into this thing!” Let’s give all the bloggers and the podcasters stuff they can really sink their teeth into. There are amazing online writers out there that are dying for something good to write about in the mainstream arena, not to mention the podcasters that want to talk about comics in a more in-depth way, but seem to have less and less to talk about.

–Man of Action’s Joe Casey, comics writer of long standing and supervising producer/story editor/head writer of the forthcoming Ultimate Spider-Man animated series from Disney/Marvel, calls it like he sees it regarding the dearth of new and exciting ideas in superhero comics. I think we can all agree with the last part of this quote, at least — will no one think of the bloggers???

This quote comes from a lengthy, extraordinarily juicy interview with Casey by the Comics Reporter’s Tom Spurgeon, the kick-off to his annual Holiday Interview Series, one of my favorite comics Christmas traditions. Be sure to read the whole thing for Casey’s as-per-usual no-holds-barred thoughts on the death of WildStorm, work-for-hire comics vs. creator-owned comics (such as Officer Downe, art from which by Chris Burnham is shown above), work-for-hire animation vs. creator-owned animation, his work on Dark Reign: Zodiac and Superman/Batman, making a living in comics, and much more.

Full-scale warfare between convention promoters isn’t universal, believe it or not — some are giving peace a chance. In addition to the recent arrangement worked out by Heroes Con and Supercon to avoid a date conflict, Emerald City ComiCon‘s Jim Demonakos tells Robot 6 that following an unavoidable conflict with Orlando’s MegaCon the weekend of March 13, 2010, he and MegaCon’s Beth Widera collaborated on choosing dates for 2011 so that future overlap could be avoided. “We ended up on the same dates for 2010 and neither of us could move, but we’ve talked and coordinated and our mutual 2011 dates will not be on each other’s dates at all,” says Demonakos. “Con planning, always an adventure.”

Indeed. While it’s not quite “all quiet on the Con War front” in terms of open hostilities between the nebulous Gareb Shamus/Wizard Entertainment empire and Reed Exhibitions, things have at least died down to a dull roar at the moment. Shamus remains silent, Reed insists it’s business as usual regardless of Shamus’s confrontational scheduling moves, and about the closest you can get to one-on-one antagonism between the two rival convention promoters is a do-it-yourself comparison of their pre- and post-Halloween guest announcements: Hellboy creator Mike Mignola will be a guest of honor at Reed’s C2E2, while Batman TV star Burt Ward will be appearing at Shamus’s Anaheim Comic Con that same weekend.

But the lack of direct conflict doesn’t mean a few verbal grenades haven’t been lobbed Wizard/Shamus’s way over the past week by other parties, ranging from former employees to a pair of recent Wiz sparring partners, cartoonist Scott Kurtz and Marvel’s C.B. Cebulski.

One such explosion took place at the message board of Panels on Pages, a site founded by now-ex-Wizard Universe Message Board users-cum-Wizard website/magazine writers. With the shutdown of the WUMB last week, PoP has become increasingly required reading for dedicated Wizard watchers. Case in point: PoP message board user Foxy recounted a story of how earlier this year, Wizard employees Brett White and Adam Tracey used the WUMB to search for fan-owned Michael Turner sketches the company could publish in an expanded version of its Turner tribute hardcover. The staffers announced that a portion of the proceeds would be donated to the Sam Loeb Foundation, set up by comics superstar (and Turner’s friend) Jeph Loeb in honor of his late son, who like Turner died (too young) of cancer. But after White was fired, Tracey unceremoniously quit, and the book finally came out, Foxy and other WUMBers discovered that the promised donation was never made. The WUMB thread announcing the search for sketches and chronicling the subsequent demand for answers as to what happened to the charitable donation never received an official response and disappeared (as did two similar threads) with the WUMB itself — but not before PoP member Solstrom preserved and reposted it on PoP’s board.

The outcry attracted the attention of Rich Johnston, who since his Wizard-funded trip to the Big Apple Comic Con has emerged as the only writer able to get Wizard staffers to comment on the record (outside of press releases and the now-defunct WUMB). Writing both on the PoP board and his own Bleeding Cool site, Johnston said he got in touch with Wizard VP of Business Development Stephen Shamus (brother of owner and CEO Gareb Shamus), who blamed the disappearing donation on a communication breakdown caused by staff turnover, and said that now that they’d been made aware of the problem, the company would contact the Sam Loeb Foundation to make the donation — and to see if they’d be interested in setting up a donation drive at future Shamus conventions.

However, Shamus’s explanation, and Johnston’s subsequent statement that “it’s possible the right people did not read the right thread,” didn’t fly with the PoPsters, who point out that threads about the Turner book, customer service issues, and other problems went on for months with the clear knowledge of Wizard staffers. Indeed, the frequent intervention of Wizard higher-ups in ordering the deletion and banning of threads and users critical of the company appear to indicate that if anything, this sort of thread received extra attention from decision-makers within the Shamus organization.

Elsewhere on PoP, former Wizard staff writer, frequent WUMB pot-stirrer, and Political Power: Barack Obama author Chris Ward was a guest on the site’s weekly podcast. (Discussion of Wizard and the death of the WUMB begins at 1:04:20; Ward’s appearance begins at 1:09:38.) Ward minces no words for his former company, which he calls “totally mismanaged.”

“These guys literally have no fucking idea what they’re doing… They have neither the skills nor the insight to keep up, and the people that had that, they fired,” Ward says of Wizard’s upper echelon. [Full disclosure: I don't know from skills or insight, but I was one of the people the company fired.] Though he does praise managing editor Andy Serwin, Ward also reveals that he’s been blacklisted from the magazine for making a joke about a freelance check bouncing, tells tales out of school about the work environment, and takes some pretty vicious shots at Stephen Shamus (and, in passing, Rich Johnston). For their part, hosts Lee Rodriguez, Jason Kerouac, Tripper McGee, and Jason Knize describe the experience of being plucked from the WUMB to write for Wizard proper, only to watch their gigs disappear as the editors who hired them got laid off one after another.

But it’s not just ex-Wizard writers who have a bone to pick with the company. Fresh off his Twitter tirade against the company, PvP writer-artist Scott Kurtz really let loose after receiving a letter from Sales Manager Larry Ernst, addressed to “Kurt,” encouraging him to attend the Anaheim Comic Con, apparently sent without knowing that Kurtz had already made his feelings about Gareb Shamus’s conventions abundantly clear. In an open letter to Ernst and Wizard, Kurtz writes “Your conventions are total horseshit” and gets angrier from there, reserving his most undiluted fury for what he describes as the magazine’s ignoring of late artist Mike Wieringo, then its public about-face upon Wieringo’s passing. Kurtz’s sentiments echo those of Wieringo himself, as expressed in this impassioned defense of Heroes Con and attack on Gareb Shamus, written by ‘Ringo during Heroes Con’s initial scheduling conflict with Shamus’s never-realized Wizard World Atlanta. (Ironically, a gallery of Wieringo’s Wizard covers, which might offer proof that the magazine did indeed pay attention to the artist, has disappeared along with the bulk of Wizard’s website.)

Reactions to Kurtz’s post have varied. Marvel talent liaison C.B. Cebulski, himself no stranger to public disputes with Wizard, tweeted a link to the open letter in seemingly supportive fashion, indicating that a recent high-level meeting between Cebulski and Wizard editorial either didn’t produce a rapprochement or was subsequently undermined by the Big Apple/NYCC battle. Comics Alliance’s Laura Hudson’s defense of current and former Wizard employees against Kurtz’s blanket statements (coupled with a few shots at Kurtz’s self-described status as “a pioneer in my field” and “‘tastemaker’”) met with vehement comment-thread opposition from Kurtz’s fans (UPDATE: and from Kurtz himself), and with considerably more polite dissent from Tom Spurgeon, who argues that getting yelled at from time to time is the price of working for a company with divisive policies. And on his own blog, Chris Ward returned with the inside story of the incident Kurtz says turned him against Wizard — a “convention horror story” involving Kurtz, Ward, Ethan Van Sciver, a deaf fan, and “the world’s shittiest band.”

As Shamus/Wizard higher-ups continue to strategically distance themselves from the comics industry (even as seemingly contradictory moves are rumored behind-the-scenes); as decision time approaches for guests of the conflicting Reed and Shamus shows; and as sharper contrasts are drawn between the tactics used by Shamus and those employed by Reed and by regional con organizations like Emerald City and MegaCon, we may see more and more professionals and Wizard alums become comfortable publicly taking aim at the house that Gareb built.

(“Con War” graphic courtesy of Jason Erwin)

"Watchmen" on the Kindle

Conventions | Registration is closed for New England Webcomics Weekend, the March 20-22 event in Easthampton, Mass., that some already are calling “Webcomicstock.”

What’s Webcomics Weekend? It’s not really a convention, organizers say; it’s more a gathering — a free one, at that. It will feature panels, livedraw events, book signings, and guests such as Gene Ambaum and Bill Barnes (Unshelved), Danielle Corsetto (Girls With Slingshots), Rene Engstrom (Anders Loves Maria), Meredith Gran (Octopus Pie), Scott Kurtz (PvP), Ryan North (Dinosaur Comics) and R. Stevens (Diesel Sweeties).

E-devices | At Gearlog, Brian Heater tries out Bone, Jimmy Corrigan, New X-Men and Watchmen on Amazon’s new Kindle: “In my humble opinion, the best device for reading comics at the moment (besides, you know, old-timey comics themselves) is the iPhone.”

Webcomics | The Floating Lightbulb and The Comic Chronicles’ John Jackson Miller try to figure out what to make of GoogleTrends data showing a steady decline of unique visitors for many of the most-popular webcomics.

E-devices | Jason Ankeny lays out why mobile devices are the future of comic strips: “Few forms of creative expression are better suited to that kind of brief consumer engagement than comic strips. Life in Hell — a crudely illustrated but consistently sharp and insightful black-and-white strip  — would seem like a natural on a Kindle or on an iPhone, as would any number of classic daily efforts including Calvin & Hobbes, The Far Side, Krazy Kat or Doonesbury.”

Blogging | To mark the second anniversary of Super Punch, John Struan offers some good tips about blogging, with special attention to increasing traffic.

Social media | Gay & Lesbian Times looks out how artists are using DList, a social-networking site for gay men, to promote their work.

Podcasting | The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette profiles local comics podcasters.

E-publishing | Fictionwise, the e-book retailer recently purchased by Barnes & Noble, has sold an estimated 5 million digital titles since its launch in June 2000. (via GalleyCat)