Atomic-Robo.com

The last week and a half have been a real grind, here at Crankshaft Studio. I wanted to be done with Robo 6.3 before 6.1 hit shelves, and since that was due out at least a week ago, maybe two, I was in full-on workasaurus mode. Due to yet another SNAFU at our printer however, it looks like I wrapped things up with time to spare. Hooray?

I’ve been Tweeting little snapshots of my work as I go, but I know a lot of you guys never got around to doing the whole Twitter thing, and now that you are Google Plussing the hell out of everything, you never will. So I thought I would take pics of each stage involved in creating a single panel. Continue reading

So, when you make comic books, you have to write solicit text. It’s a little blurb that goes into Previews Magazine to let retailers know what’s going on in your comic book to help them determine how they will stock it if at all.

Sounds nice in theory, but in practice there’s so many comics published every month that no one has the time to read all the solicit text, much less keep up with the current month’s actual comics, much much less the act of selling those goddamn comics in the first place. Marvel, DC, Image, and Dark Horse take up the “front half” of Previews because combined they account for about 95% of total sales. Retailers largely ignore the “back half” of Previews since everything else constitutes 5% of their total sales.

I mean, you can’t blame retailers for doing that. They’re already gambling on every single title, better to stick with relatively safe bets like The Avengers and Batman to pay the bills.

I’m sympathetic.

But it’s not a very good system for us Five Percenters. The whole process of Previews and solicits is an artifact of how comics were sold thirty years ago and they’re about as relevant as buggy whips in an era that contains ubiquitous internet access.

But y’gotta write solicit text. Usually it’s a bunch of AND NOTHING WILL EVER BE THE SAME marketing hypespeak to keep people invested in the latest build ups to the upcoming regressive event that’ll undo everything that got NEVER BE THE SAME-ed last time. It’s bullshit. Writers know it, editors know it, marketing knows it, retailers know it, and fans know it.

So, I figured if Atomic Robo is all about getting rid of the dumb parts of comics, then that should apply to the solicit text too. Therefore! I wrote Volume 6′s solicits in a stream of (fairly bitter) consciousness style just to see if anyone was paying attention.

Here they are.
Continue reading

I have a reputation for being a pretty negative guy. My own co-creator often refers to me as “The Grumpus” and “Grandpa Funnybooks”. I’ve often wonder why this is. Not why people think I’m a grumpy jerk. This is a self-evident thing. But I wonder why I am that way. In essence I was able to break it down to two fundamental and seemingly contradictory statements.

1. I love comics.

2. I hate comics.

Mystery solved! Continue reading