Latest Posts

I've been backing Kickstarter projects for a little now (since 2011) and the vast majority of them have been comics projects. The handful that weren't were still comics-related somehow. Frequently, I'll back a project at the lowest level that actually includes a physical copy of the book they're trying to publish. Sometimes one of the higher tiers if they include previous volumes that I missed for whatever reason.

For projects that I'm really excited about, I'll go towards the upper end of things, often with one of two types of rewards. If it's an artist that I really like, I might opt for a reward that includes a page of original art. (Usually, I'm not down for sketches and custom illustrations, though. I prefer the production art from an actual comic.)

The other higher end reward I might go for is if/when they offer to draw me into the comic itself. I think it's a fun little aside that lets me pretend my life is more interesting and exciting than it is. I think I've signed on for maybe a half dozen appearances so far, and two of them have come out.

I've showed up in a few webcomics, too, mostly when a creator is just looking to drum up some interest and engage with their fans. And I've been name-dropped in a handful of comics as well. All of these are fun, and some day I'm going to have to sit down and try to figure out the continuity of how all of these work together!

But here's the interesting twist. The last project I signed on to have an appearance for is Karl Kesel's and Tom Grummett's Section Zero. I was a big fan of the original three issues, and I was really excited when he finally was able to get to a point where he could conclude it. Also, I think my usual sort-of-an-Indiana-Jones-knock-off look would blend well into the story! And what's interesting is that Kesel sent out a release form for me to sign.

It's nothing hugely complicated or anything; basically just a "yes, I agree that it's okay to use my likeness" acknowledgement. But I find it interesting that it's the first time I've encountered that. And, coming from a long-standing comic professional, I'm wondering if that comes from some past experiences they've seen/heard of in the past.

It's probably a smart move. While I'm sure the vast majority of readers wouldn't care (like me, they're probably thrilled just to make an in-story appearance) I also expect there's that one guy who shows up in a comic and then demands additional payments when the book is collected in hardcover or something. It only takes that one guy, too. Then everybody else panics on both sides, and things get ugly all over. Who needs that? So Kesel is heading off any potential issues WAAAY before they even consider arriving.

Maybe it's a bit cynical, but it's also probably a good bit of CYA that it might not be a bad idea for other creators to consider.
Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...

Kleefeld on Comics: On Business: CXC

Kleefeld on Comics: On History: Columbus

Patreon: MTV Geek Classic: Kleefeld on Webcomics #36: How Green Are Webcomics Anyway?

Kleefeld on Comics: Weekly Comics Links

FreakSugar: Webcomics Wednesday: Bye, Net Neutrality

Kleefeld on Comics: On -isms: Look Straight Ahead, Take 2

Patreon: MTV Geek Classic: Kleefeld on Webcomics #37: Comics as Educational Tools

Kleefeld on Comics: On Strips: Robert Ripley
Robert Ripley's claim to fame is, of course, Ripley's Believe It or Not! For nearly a century, Ripley's name has been associated with curious facts and strange oddities, and the name brand has been associated with short films, TV shows, a radio program, games, museums... but I think most people forget that he was actually a cartoonist for a decade before.

Like many artists, Ripley did a lot of drawing from a very young age. His first published cartoon/illustration was in a 1908 issue of Life when he was 17 years old, for which he was paid eight dollars. In early 1909, he moved to San Francisco and, thanks to a family friend, began working for The Bulletin as a sports cartoonist. He wasn't particularly successful and encountered a number of difficulties in San Francisco, so in 1912 he moved to New York where he thought his prospects as a cartoonist would be better.

After trying out unsuccessfully for the New York Giants (yes, the baseball team!) he began working as a sports cartoonist for The Globe with his first cartoon published in early 1913. His sports cartoons were well-received enough, but not especially note-worthy. Given that era's limitations in mitigating weather, things always slowed down considerably during the winter months and he would often have difficulty find topics to cover in his cartoons. After several years of this, in 1919 while facing his next deadline, he threw together a collection of odd sports facts from clippings he had collected over the years. Entitled Champs and Chumps (seen in the photo here) it's generally seen as the first attempt at the type of thing that would later make him famous (often cited as such by Ripley himself).

However, it would be another ten months before another similar installment would be published; this time, he actually began calling it Believe It or Not. Though his Believe It or Not feature did start seeing more frequency, it still only appeared once every two or three months. (Again, generally because Ripley was facing a deadline and strapped for ideas.) He also began adding text pieces to accompany his cartoons and the paper began touting his work as one of their selling points.

The paper found him to be such a valuable artist and storyteller that in 1922, they sent him on a fully paid, four month trip around the world with their only real stipulation being that he was to chronicle what he saw and experienced. He filed a Ramble 'Round the World with Ripley column nearly every day, each with an illustration of some strange new sight. Given the restrictions of travel, much of what he saw was entirely new to him (one of his cartoons is captioned simply "We see our first Hindu") and because most of his readers shared his previous limited travel experience, his pieces became very popular.

When he returned to New York, Ripley began infusing his Believe It or Not cartoons with items beyond sports. Obviously influenced by his travels. This caught the attention of Dick Simon and Max Schuster, then publishers of crossword puzzles, but Ripley turned down their book offer, feeling he was better suited to newspapers.

Ripley's cartoons caught national attention when, in 1927, he included a blurb noting that Charles Lindbergh was in fact the 67th person to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. Given how much celebrity Lindbergh had himself garnered via his flight, Ripley drew a great deal of ire from readers, claiming he was anti-American. He let the furor build before offering that the observation that he never claimed Lindbergh wasn't the first person to make a solo flight, and that there were in fact a three previous trans-Atlantic crossings each featuring multiple people. That wound up being a very successful tactic for him, and he began using more facts that seemed to upend conventional knowledge. So when he finally did agree to Simon and Schuster's book deal, the collection of his cartoons went flying off the shelves, becoming an instant best-seller!

The book landed in front of newspaper publishing mogul William Randolph Hearst in 1929, who then began syndicating Ripley's Believe It or Not worldwide. Ripley's contract was for $100,000 year (about $1.5 million today). The following year, he began to be featured in Vitaphone shorts and in radio programs shortly after that. In 1933, he opened his first "odditorium." By the mid-1930s, his income had climbed to a half million a year (about $900,000 today).

Despite his work in other media, Ripley continued drawing the strip until his death in 1949. He did have a variety of assistants and ghost artists, however, throughout much of his tenure, with Paul Frehm taking on the full art chores after Ripley's death. Paul's brother William began helping, too, in 1948 and took over full-time in 1978.

Despite being known as a curator of the strange and unusual, Ripley spent most of his career as a newspaper cartoonist, and he only spent 20 of his 58 years as the popular collector of the odd.
I originally reviewed Elaine M. Will's Look Straight Ahead back in 2013 when it first came out. Derek and I reviewed the original webcomic version last year over at Comics Alternative. In short, it was excellent! I'm bringing it up again now because Renegade Arts Entertainment has picked it up and is publishing a second edition. The first edition was self-published, so in theory, Renegade Arts should give the book a wider availability. It's currently listed in the October Previews catalog.

It's a book worthy of bringing to a wider audience, I believe, precisely because of the subject matter. The book follows Jeremy's descent into... well, I was going to say madness but that sounds a bit trite. And that's part of the problem the book addresses. Jeremy has a mental illness, and it's treated here in a realistic, sympathetic manner. But most of my vocabulary in explaining that here rely on phrases like "going crazy" and "descent into madness" which, while accurate enough, trivialize and stigmatize mental illnesses in general. In many respects, it's a form of able-ism in that we, collectively, dismiss genuine mental problems and lump them in alongside characters like the Joker, who's alternatively depicted as wrapped-in-a-straightjacket-laughing-like-a-hyena-crazy and homicidal-maniac-with-zero-sense-of-empathy-mad.

Much of that has to do with a general lack of understanding of how the brain works, and even more ignorance when it comes to the general population's perception. Which is why we, as a society, ran "insane asylums" for as long as we did. (Although in many respects, we still do. While many people who would have once been categorized as "insane" -- including everyone from homosexuals to those with Down syndrome -- are now given better opportunities and can interact with society, we have shifted the mental illnesses into criminalized behavior, and many people who need treatment are locked up in prisons.

Which is why Look Straight Ahead is important and worth talking about. I think it goes a long way to destigmatizing mental illness, and that's a large part of Will's intent. I seem to recall throwing out the idea at some point that she was leaving the full story available for free online precisely because she viewed it as something of a PSA, and Will later confirmed that was definitely one of the reasons. But with Renegade pushing the book out into venues that Will herself doesn't always have access to, the prospect of reaching a wider audience to talk about mental health issues in an entertaining and engaging way certainly strikes me as a win-win.

You can use Diamond code OCT171765 to order the book through your local comic shop or still check the story out for free here.
As I mentioned yesterday, CXC was this past weekend in Columbus, OH and it was a great celebration of comics. In fact, if you've been paying attention the past several years, you will have probably heard more than a few big comics things coming out of central Ohio. Which might seem kind of odd -- historically, the big comics hubs in the States have centered around publisher locations, something which Columbus isn't really known for.

So how did Columbus become one of these comics hubs?

Simple: Lucy Caswell.

Let me start by backing up a bit. Milton Caniff was born in Hillsboro, OH in 1907. He went to Ohio State University and then started working alongside Billy Ireland and Dudley Fisher for The Columbus Dispatch. When his position was eliminated, Caniff moved to New York and picked up some cartooning gigs for a few years before striking it big with Terry and the Pirates in 1934. I believe Caniff lived most of the rest of his life in/around New York City, moving on to Steve Canyon after leaving Terry.

Despite his distance, though, he turned over all his artwork, papers and such to Ohio State in 1977. Specifically, the material all went to the School of Journalism since much of Caniff's career was in newspapers, even though he wasn't exactly doing journalism per se. Caswell happened to be the librarian there at the time. She recognized that the work was important and went through trying to organize and catalog everything.

Back in 1977, though, there wasn't much archival work being done on comics, so Caswell tried contacting other librarians to figure out how best to get it all figured out. While no one else was doing anything and Caswell was left to her own devices, inventing methods as she went, that also helped to spread word of what she was doing. So other comics-related collections started getting sent her way, and she did more active soliciting of material. A little over a decade later, she had acquired enough material that she had run out of storage space twice and was forced to begin using an off-site facility to house some items. Word continued to spread, and those interested in cartooning and comics began gravitating towards the area, Jeff Smith probably being one of the most notable.

Being centrally located in Ohio certainly helped too, as Roger Price's Mid-Ohio Con, which had become one of the mid-west's notable comic shows in the 1980s, moved an hour south from the Mansfield area to Columbus in the early 1990s. Gib Bickel followed soon after, founding Laughing Ogre Comics in 1994, which quickly became known a well-run and progressive comics shop. Bob Corby then launched his more indie-focused SPACE convention in 2000. Columbus' location meant they could all draw on interest from Cleveland to Cincinnati.

Caswell spent the latter part of her formal tenure at Ohio State preparing a new and formal expansion of the library. The new library was completed in 2013 and, as part of the formal dedication, was host to the Festival of Cartoon Art. The educators, researches, comics professionals, and fans in attendance were all in awe of the new facility and I think that's when word got very publicly spread outside academia what Caswell had been doing in a basement for so many years. The new facility is such an impressive one that people almost immediately began making pilgrimages there to conduct whatever research they were interested in.

The new comics MFA that the Columbus College of Art and Design started this fall is a direct result of that. (Laurenn McCubbin moved to Columbus in 2013.) CXC is a pretty direct result of that. (Tom Spurgeon moved to Columbus in 2015.)

Caswell formally retired at the end of 2010, and Jenny Robb stepped in as Billy Ireland's curator, but Caswell came back as the curator of special projects in 2011. And she's still very much a staple in the comics community there in Columbus. And why shouldn't she be? She's almost singularly responsible for the comics community in Columbus as much of what's there now is a direct outgrowth of the work she began putting in back in the 1970s.

And while I sit here in my personal library outside Chicago, I do find myself making more trips to Columbus than I did when I used to live in Ohio and tried to mostly avoid Columbus proper if I could. Thanks, Lucy!
This past weekend was Cartoons Crossroads Columbus (CXC) in the middle of Ohio. It's one of the newer comics conventions, spearheaded by Jeff Smith and Tom Spurgeon. I believe this was the show's third year, but the second in the newly renovated Columbus Metropolitan Library.

The show itself was really impressive, and had pretty much everything I'm looking for in a comics convention these days. There was a really solid mix of creators there, in terms of racial/ethnic diversity as well as age/length of time in the business, plus a good mix of different aspects of comics, running from monthly pamphlet creators who've worked at Marvel and DC to editorial cartoonists to webcomikers to small, indie press folks. There were lots of creators tables, but also some setups from publishers and comics retailers. The panels, too, seemed to reflect the mix as well.

Despite some big name talents like Kelly Sue Deconnick, Chris Ware, and Kyle Baker and being in the center of Ohio's capital, the show still seemed fairly intimate. I started seeing people I know while I was parking my car the first day, and ran into a few other people I knew before getting into the show itself. And throughout the two days I was able to attend, I spent a good deal of time catching up with people I knew. One of the show's organizers noted that was deliberate; trying to give a comfortable atmosphere for professionals who know other people in the business.

Interestingly, one of the creators I spoke with noted that the show seemed quieter than many others, but not in a bad way, like there was nobody there. Rather, it seemed like people were pretty intent on checking out what people had and were invested in finding new things. And, while I did see many people I knew, there were many more than I didn't know, or only knew by reputation.

I talked to multiple organizers who said that they had very much actively checked out other conventions to see what they did right and wrong, and it very much showed here. Everything seemed to be laid out fairly well, and traffic seemed to flow pretty smoothly most of the time. (Although it did get busy enough a couple of times that I had to do some odd side-stepping, it certainly wasn't the completely-blocked-aisles that I've encountered at other shows.) That's not to say there were no problems, but the ones that came up seemed (to me, as a visitor) largely inconsequential and ones I would scarcely have noticed if I didn't actually know some of these people who told me the issues they ran into. This speaks a lot to the benefit of checking out and critically analyzing what other people are doing. Steal from the best, as they say.

The show is free to visitors. I gather the show's income comes more from the tabling fees and some sponsorships. I did some back-of-the-envelope math, based on some guestimated numbers and it doesn't strike me as a show that's going to get either Smith or Spurgeon rich any time soon. (I'm having trouble imagining they had any more than $100,000 in revenue; the number is probably much closer to $50,000. I have no first-hand, or even second-hand knowledge on this but for a show of this size/caliber, that strikes me as an incredibly small amount to work with.) But that's not the point either. From everything I know about them (and the other folks involved) they're very much more interested in making it a genuine celebration of comics. Not the commercialized version of a celebration of comics, but a heart-felt celebration of the medium.

I thought it was a fantastic show, and I would encourage everybody who can to go in future years, so they are able to keep things going here. I had a great time (despite missing the entire first two days, which also sounded amazing!) and I found a wealth of material to explore. I told several people, truthfully, that I could have dropped at least $20 at every single table if my bank account would have allowed it. Seriously, the only real complaint I could lodge would be that I wasn't able to attend every day of the event!