The Emperor

gailsimone:

That is some terrible grammar, right there.

I’m posting a lot today as a personal goodbye, for totally selfish reasons, to Tumblr, so forgive me if there’s a lot of me cluttering up your dash today, it won’t happen again any time soon.  ;)

I have a question, and it’s going to lead to a further question a little later tonight.

But for now, my question is this (I asked this once here a long time ago)…actually, it’s a question with some sub-questions.

One of the reasons I liked Tumblr is that it seemed like there were some fine writers and artists.  It’s always a great pleasure to find someone has some wit or style or other facility with words, and then you go to their Tumblr and soak it all up.

And it’s delightful to see artists doing good work here…there’s a couple I have contacted about their work, to see what their plans are.

So I have a few questions.

How many of you have aspirations to write or draw, or work in comics in any capacity, either as just kind of a daydream, or as a genuine hope to have a career in comics?

(For the record, I know this isn’t everyone’s goal).

If so, what sort of material are you imagining yourself doing…superhero, licensed stuff, independent, whatever?

If so, have you taken any steps to make it happen yet? Have you gotten work published?  If not, do you have any sort of plan in mind to get published?

I’d love to work professionally in comics and will do sooner rather than later, things have reached the point where I’ll turn pro almost inevitably, although I am working on giving this process a hefty shove too. I already write non-fiction professionally.

Until then I have had a lot of stories published in the small press and have a tonne of work in the pipeline. The published work has had great reviews and plenty of positive feedback, plus I’ve been approached by really good artists who want to work with me, which is all very heartening and suggests I am doing something right. I’ve also been recently helping out the editors of some small press comics with a touch of script consultancy, which is also very interesting and helpful in improving my own work.

I’d clearly love to work on my own material and I have a lot of stories in various stages of development. Currently it tends to fall generally under weird sci-fi and horror, often with a period or pulpy feel. I’ve been a fan of superheroes since I was a kid so, clearly, writing something at the Big Two has to be an ultimate aim, but I don’t have a hankering to write the A-listers - as you’ve shown you can have a lot of fun working on the C or Z-listers and I have quite a few ideas worked out in case I stumbled across an editor who eventually gives in and says “OK pitch me something, so I can get out of this box.”

So at the moment, as well as honing my craft, I am focused on improving my workflow and making sure I can get my work under the noses of as many editors as possible. So getting more efficient and doing more networking is the order of the day.

Also sorry to hear you are going, it is a big loss to Tumblr but if it means more great comics, I’ll take the hit.

Good news - Facebook have overturned their ban on Vampire Vixens demonstrating that you cannot kill that which does not live:

The Vixen’s Facebook page has arisen from it’s grave after it was deleted on Friday last week.
A big, big thank you to everyone for their support through reviews, Tweets and comments.
I have no doubt your support played a major part in the it’s reinstatement.
Cheers!

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Vampire-Vixens-of-the-Wehrmacht/179230265443902

Thanks to Rich over on Everything Comes Back to 2000 AD for a review of the first Vampire Vixens instalment:

This strip kicks off in Wasted issue 7 which is available from their website HERE and also from comic shops etc. The guys were good enough to send me the first installment and I have to say… I loved it. The only possibly criticism you could level is that it’s a little short but thats the curse of the anthology title unfortunately. The fully painted artwork is all to the standard of the pics shown here and there is an evil streak of irreverent humour running through it that really appealed. How can you not like a story where a stiff upper lipped british sergeant proclaims Hitler’s latest scheme has earned him “a place on the rustiest arse spike in Hell” ?

This first installment does its job of setting up the premise for the rest of the story and also ends with a SERIOUSLY hot vampire picture which you’ll have to get the issue to check out. Really looking forward to keeping up with this strip and already have my fingers crossed Robert Rodriguez comes across it and gives us a badass movie version.

This is ridiculous:

For any of you that were following the Vampire Vixen Facebook page, I’m sorry but Facebook has removed it and I’ve been issued with a warning that “hateful and threatening” content will not be tolerated.

It’s a shame they never read the FB info page because they would have quickly found that it’s not a Nazi propaganda device but quite an old fashioned style war story with a supernatural element, namely Vampires. The villains are still the Nazis and it’s no different to the way they are depicted in films like Raiders of the Lost Ark or where Eagles Dare, i.e. they are despicable.

To say that I’m angry of what Facebook seem to think I was promoting is an understatement.

It is what you get from a monolithic Monopoly like that. I, for one, can’t wait for the day distributed social networks like Diaspora take off.

This isn’t the first time this has happened - the very promising sci-fi comedy film Iron Sky was also banned because it is about Nazi flying saucers landing on the Moon (I’ve been on their mailing list for a while now but must have missed this, I found it because the page is #3 on Google for the search nazis+facebook). Meanwhile, on the “dark side of Facebook” both the BNP and the EDL are there, despite their being other groups dedicated to getting the former banned from Facebook and the latter using 88 to sign their official posts (H being the 8th letter of the alphabet, so 88 = HH = Heil Hitler. I know this to my cost after having a run in with Combat 18 in my youth).

The good news? Iron Sky are back on Facebook - they have two pages here and here. It only took one day for them to reverse their decision, let’s hope they see sense with the Vampire Vixens too.