Found In An Old Notebook

Finding some odds and ends while cleaning up the studio, including an old notebook with some very random notes about comic books and stuff. I used to make a lot of lists like these because there's some bad patches of meat in my skull that make me do pointless things. The only thing that probably stops me from doing this more often nowadays is that I have fewer opinions (I have no idea what's going on in comics anymore) and I try not to write anything that isn't absolutely necessary because of my stupid hand issues.

Here's ten items for the hell of it, augmented in places where my mind wandered while typing, before I toss the notes. File under "comic book opinions". I have no idea if some of these even apply anymore (in regards to comic book ads, for instance), but they're perfect for an arbitrary post.

1) Too many Big Two comic stories explain things rather than tell a story.

2) Lobo is a lousy character I never liked, a faux-badass, embarrassingly written by nerds falling back on mostly embarrassing action films for tough guy reference. He never really got over in comics because he's so obviously a watered down mainstream version of an often already-embarrassing indy comics badass character. All the fake and near-curses and phony biker talk just shows off the constraints and (editorially necessary) lack of "real" dialog and behavior in the DCU, winking at the reader about pushing the envelope a millimeter or two, to no great purpose. He clashes with the older established characters, which is the point, I guess, but even to that end he's neither fish nor fowl.

3) Maybe I was being overly judgmental, maybe it was projection because I'm so self-critical, maybe it was jealousy, but I never trusted any creator who set up a message board about themselves.   

4) Any adult who went to Steve Ditko's apartment and knocked on his door, knowing how he felt about his privacy, was a bit of a jerk. Especially the people who did that BBC documentary. No matter how much of a fan you were, and how "well meaning" you might have been (or thought you were being, because, really, it was about yourself), you should have stayed home and left the guy alone.

5) We don't know how to teach comics writing.

6) C.B. Cebulski never should have been given the job. 

7) Co-creators of a creator-owned project should split profits 50-50. I assume that's the way it works, but you have to trust it doesn't always go that way.

8) Everyone says they want new things but what they really want is a specific thing they can't articulate. And whatever it is, it's almost never actually a new thing that exists and can be bought. It's probably a new spin on an old established thing that they're comfortable with (if not fixated on). It's probably just another Batman versus The Joker story, except with their favorite creative team on it. 

9) Too many editors have no idea how to actually edit a story. Too many editors are forced to edit too many books, so even if they do know how to edit a story, they don't have the time.

10) Ads tossed into the middle of a comic story are ugly, take the reader out of the experience, insult the work, and probably don't sell anyone on anything anyway.