Welcome, New Patreon Backers! Smiles, Everyone, Smiles! (Patreon)

Welcome, welcome, welcome aboard. And hello to everyone else, of course, of course. 

Since we have some new backers, I thought I'd do a new post to thank everyone. And it's a super-nerdy, embarrassing kind of thing, because guess who found a file of old writing I never posted/finished for my old LiveJournal account. I think this goes back....ten years? Probably longer, going by some of the references, I have no concept of time in the best of times, which these aren't so I can't pinpoint it at all, it probably goes back a lot further. 

Among these Pulitzer-worthy uncovered gems are extremely long, scathing, nit-picking reviews of Marvel Essentials collections, letters not sent to friends and associates in the business (not about them, about idiots and/or comics), essays on who-the-hell-knows-I'm-afraid-to-look, and a list of 1000 things about the comic book industry that pissed me off or were just plain stupid and/or depressing. The items were serious, but the "rage" wasn't, it was mostly a bored nerd exercise to see how many I could list without researching (or just listing endless names of comic books and comic book professionals), adding a few here and there over time, before realizing it was a very stupid task to set, even if you could reach 1000, even if it would be a few laughs for the LJ posts. I think I got to barely a hundred before coming to my senses. 

In embarrassment I present items 1-25. It's not nasty or scandalous stuff, it's just so...Eltingville. I still post some bile to Twitter these days, but the ranting is shorter and it's focused and not a way of life. Not...an Eltingville list. I look at some of this old spewing stuff and wonder what the hell I was doing/thinking, wasting so much adult time on blather when I could have been making pages or watching a movie with Sarah or just sitting and breathing steadily. I needed a better therapist back then, I really did. Oy, 

Anyway, you folks are great, so you get to see the sublime, the ridiculous and sublimely ridiculous. Or something like that. I may post the rest, I may trash the rest. 

In the mighty, Eltingville Manner...

1) Heavy airbrush computer coloring 

2) Penciling art done for heavy airbrush-style computer coloring 

3) Marvel’s lower-case computer lettering font 

4) DC Comics policy of not allowing freelancers to write and draw material unless they incorporate or go on the payroll 

5) Multiple-issue crossover stunt events 

6) Multiple covers 

7) Bagged comics/magazines 

8) How most people dress at the major award ceremonies 

9) 90% of award acceptance speeches (mine, too, thank god I didn't have to hear them, Plus, drunk)

10) People asking for free stuff at convention tables 

11) Freelancers trying to cadge free stuff from editors/publishers every. single. time.

12) The very wealthy mainstream comics executive who walked off with an armload of trades and comics from a friend’s SDCC table without paying, assuming they were free for him because. EDIT: They called him back and made him pay, and it was beautiful to watch.

13) Fred Greenberg’s conventions   EDIT: Gone, ha ha. 

14) Village Comics  EDIT: Gone, ha ha.

15) Cartoonists who want to trade comics or mini-comics at conventions  and don’t understand that I don’t personally publish the comics I sell and can’t simply hand them out every time I’m asked.     

16) People who ask for free art. Not only just a doodle, but an actual page of artwork. 

17) Insulting hate mail that’s more about me than my work. 

18) Trade collections that are put out directly after the single comics they’re collecting.   

19) The comic show I did early in my career where I didn’t sell a single thing, fell asleep on the table, and woke up to have a kid ask me, “Who are you?”, while regarding me as if I was a cockroach on his Hostess Cupcake.   

20) The comics volunteer Staff at Dragon*Con who helped ruin the show for us the year we attended EDIT: We've never gone back, decades later. Worst con experience ever, even including the one with the Dave Sim incident.

21) Getting left out of the San Diego Comic Con program book the year I was a guest  EDIT: It happens, but it's so "comics", and I'm someone who's only going to get the one shot. And no inkpot award, when everyone else seemed to get them as guests. It was still a good time, but I would have liked to get an inkpot, I won't lie, I like that one for some reason. And nowadays iirc the award is really cute (nerrrd).

22) Slabbed comics 

23) Magazine price guides   EDIT: Gone (I assume), ha ha.  

24) Wizard Magazine   EDIT: Gone, ha ha. Unless it came back like a bad penny'the Red Skull

25) art Spiegelman’s petulant need to smoke in public places where plain old ordinary citizens abide by the no-smoking rules. If it was medical marijuana, I’d understand, but gee fucking whiz, what a big fucking baby.