luckysipe's old man blog

Comics for tomorrow

Justice League Of America Vol 2 #33

Justice Society Of America Vol 3 #27

Bayou Vol 1 TP - Buster Moody goodness…

Star Trek Omnibus Vol 1 TP

This Is A Souvenir Songs Of Spearmint & Shirley Lee GN

Enders Shadow Battle School #5

Ghost Rider Vol 5 #35

New Avengers #53 Regular Billy Tan Cover (Dark Reign Tie-In)

1 month ago

Not back to regular scheduled programming...

First off, let me apologize to regular Old Man Blog readers for the bitter tone of the last two posts. I stand by the accuracy of the accounts, but on re-reading they seemed to me to be unnecessarily harsh. Though I will confess to a LOT of frustration with this sort of thing over the last few months, I have been treated well by most everyone involved and so the level of bitter humor seems to me disproportionate to my actual experience and treatment.

To be totally truthful, I have been treated with much more respect by the TV and movie folks than by a lot of people in comics.

I have been, stuck, I guess, in my writing efforts and will confess this has taken quite a mental toll on me of late. Venting this kind of frustration to the internet is hardly professional, and would have been better served as being fictionalized, say in a Screamland short, than to air my dirty laundry in public.

As I kinda hit an emotional and creative dark spot over the last few weeks, I have become reminded that I have a lot to look forward to:

New art from Steven Sanders on our re-worked sci-fi concept.
Actual talk of movement on new Screamland with Mr. Casanova’s possible involvement.
New art coming in from Buster Moody for upcoming Maintaining Bohemia installments.

Again, my apologizes for letting my darker instincts run wild on the blog, and a sincere apology to anyone who may have been wronged or offended.

This, however, is not my main reason for writing. I had a phone call this morning that really is going to shake up my entire world. I am going to North Carolina for several weeks to work on a gaming project. Yeah, this is sudden. The more jarring part is that may well move from current project to relocation in a VERY short period of time.

How quickly this is all going down is jarring to ME, but it’s… like, I have what I think to be one hell of an opportunity here and I am pretty set on following it. If that means things get shook up in a very abbreviated timeframe, then I am going to deal with it. I have looking for entry into the gaming industry for some time now, a lot of the same thing that draw me to comics really interest me about this area. So I am going to NC with little notice, I am going to work my ass off, and I am pretty determined to make this work.

More soon…

1 month ago

The Final Case of the Society of Elderly Detectives

A bit more on Hollywood. As I worked to get other comics projects off the ground, we acquired an agent to handle the media rights for Screamland. This being a task I am sure the agent regrets, and had certainly done nothing to advance the wealth or prestige of anyone involved.

In the course of this, I had the opportunity to pitch new ideas and concepts for possible adaptation to film and television. Why would I do this? Well, again, it has been explained to me that the best bet to get something I actually wanted write off the ground, was to write something more “commercial” (this, frankly, quickly became a code word for dumb) in another medium. Comics having such low self-esteem, that when the film people showed up to pillage what is left of the industry they were welcomed as liberators.

This went on for a couple of months, and I will say with some relief that it is a process I no longer subject myself to. Comics as an industry may view itself as the ugliest girl at the dance that would commit ANY act to be noticed, but frankly I had a life I was pretty happy with before any of this dropped in my lap and I’m very happy to leave it by the wayside.

So, for a few months I wrote several pitch ideas and outlines for this sort of thing. All this accomplished was to make me angry and crazy. The most baffling aspect of all this to me was I was getting notes asking for something “more like Screamland.” Keep in mind, that Screamland was very well reviewed, but it’s a comic that the publisher now acts embarrassed to have put out. It was a book that I was told several times by several folks was a really strong first work, but it was nothing I could show to editors. So, doing anything that resembled “Screamland” if I wanted to keep doing comics stuff was clearly not in my best interest. Also, the notes I had gotten on any “Screamland” adaptation showed me that the folks asking for some thing “more like Screamland” didn’t really want that anyway.

After several of months of this, I am happy to announce I am out of the Hollywood business. I was asked to submit a few things as the TV pilot season came around, and I couldn’t resist throwing out something of a joke. I sent in the below, claiming this would be “my most Screamland-like idea since Screamland.”

The Final Case of the Society of Elderly Detectives

So crime procedures on TV are now all based on CSI, gritty and frankly kinda gross. Remember when the cornerstone of the American crime drama were elderly folks? Hard boiled detectives that always got their man while looking like your grandparents or your favorite aunt or uncle.

What happens when the old gang are called together one last time to investigate the murder of one of their own? Do the old gumshoe tactics apply in the world of forensic crime solving? Can they solve a case in which the culprit is not the obvious spooky cousin with bushy eyebrows and a dangerous look about him?

I declared that the storytelling here would be “as familiar as Saturday afternoon re-runs, and as distant as your father’s side of the family.” With that, I was done. I didn’t expect this to warrant any sort of a reaction, but it did get me one of my favorite notes:

This is exactly the type of idea I’m looking for from you. However, old people are not at as commercial as monsters, so I’d like for you to keep churning them out…

Hollywood, you bastard, I’m through. 2 months ago

What I am up to.

Well, I am pretty much up to the same stuff as always. No news on the comics front yet, I feel somewhat better talking to a few other “newer” creators that are in the same boat. Publishers are in such bad shape at this point; they aren’t taking on anything that isn’t a licensed property or something from an established creator. I mean, anyone out there that is under the illusion that comics are cruising along just fine or that the Direct Market isn’t on life-support, (don’t worry – no messy “no treatment” orders here, they want to stay on the machines as long as possible) I would say just keep living in that magical dreamland as long as possible.

I will skip publisher stories of the last few months – as outrageous and pathetically entertaining as they are, I still have a few things out there and won’t look to burn any meaningful relationships here on my blog.

I think I am going to post a few proposals for books that went nowhere here on the blog in the next weeks. Before I get to that, I want to illuminate one of the biggest time wasters of the past several months – Hollywood shit.

Wait, I can hear you say – you can’t get arrested in comics, how the hell are people in LA wasting your time? Well, I did a comic last year, and much like everyone that manages to get a book out; we started to get the calls.

Hollywood is suffering through the largest creative bankruptcies in its history. Virtually everything coming out of LA-LA land nowadays is a remake of an older, better film, a remake of an awful TV show, or now, a shitty comic book “adaptation.” Much like the current financial crisis, the creative bankruptcy of the film industry is spreading like a cancer over to comics. You now have publishers that run on the “business plan” of selling ideas to Hollywood. I guess, had I ignored New Media completely until the bottom fell out, started to tailor my books as low-rent movie pitches, and went out of my way to preach to the Wednesday choir and avoid developing new talent, I would be looking to some form of lottery as a way forward as well.

All that aside, we (Hector Casanova and I) put out a comic last year. We were proud of it and while we were focused on getting as strong as a book as we could make out on time, these strange calls started to come in.

The first came in before issue one hit the stands. That’s right, if you suspected that some Hollywood flunky somewhere is paid to read “Previews,” then you called it. This was to start a series of bizarre conversations with one set of producers, one studio, and a cable network. As you aren’t watching an awful Screamland movie or TV show as you are reading this, then you can guess nothing really came of it.

Below are snippets of a few of the interactions, this will give you an overall feel of the level of discussion without my having to go into all of the really painful details.

Conversation one: The first set of producers

Producer: “This isn’t a kid’s book?”
Me: “Uh, no. Not really, I mean, not at all.”
Producer: “Oh, I was seeing something like “Big Fat Liar” meets “The Munsters.”
Me: (long silence – not sure how to respond) “Um, okay.”

Conversation two:

Studio Flunky: “I want to start by saying, we all love the book.”
Me: “Well, thank you.”
Studio Flunky: “The one where the guy goes to the thing out in the sticks, that was hilarious.”
Me: “um, the Wolf-Man at the comic convention?”
Studio Flunky: “Grunt”
Me: “Thanks.”
Studio Flunky: “We do have a big concern here.”
Me: “Okay, what are you thinking.”
Studio Flunky: “Well, the humor, it’s pretty dark. I mean it’s pretty rough that way.”
Me: “Okay.”
Studio Flunky: “Could we tone down that stuff. Like, take it out of being a black comedy and make the humor more, wacky.”
Me: “Isn’t that just kinda the Munsters?”

If a new Munsters show hits the airwaves some time in the next year or two, I feel some of that credit comes this way.

The last go around was with a cable network. Here I am a little torn, because the producer that contacted me was actually a really nice guy, and an actual comics fan. He was the only guy I met in this whole process that I both liked and had felt he actually read the comic. There was some back and forth on trying to make this a series, the thing that really frustrated me was it somehow fell to me to try and map out how it would work as an ongoing TV show. Me, with one comic under my belt and not being paid one dime for this work. I mean, I don’t want to write movies. If I did I would be a video store clerk out in Redondo Beach or something. I am the guy that went from seeing at least two movies a week out of college to now never going because I can’t stand film.

I was mostly fine doing this work because if it took off, we stood to make real money. My feeling is that me, somehow, being the guy flesh this out for TV is what killed it, and why it was left to me to generate ideas for this I will never understand. I DON’T WRITE FOR TV! I don’t know how and wouldn’t want to. The other thing that really got to me was the fact I started to get directives on how to do this. Andrea had to be younger and younger and more the center of the show. Could the monsters all be young? Yeah, let’s make them all 26 year-old failures. Could they all live in one house together? That makes sense, right? It was a mess, and the last one-sheet I turned in was cobbled together turd in which everyone has a hand in, but I was the only one not being paid for the work. So, presented below is that train wreck. I should say this last experience led me to tell our agent for this thing that I never wanted to talk to movie or TV people again, and if something came of any of this, I wanted to be in no way involved.

Screamland - Concept Sheet
Prepared by Harold Sipe for consideration by XXXXX
Second Draft – February 16, 2009

Maury Silverman is dead.

His daughter, Andrea, is devastated by his death, but at the same time she is thrilled to take over the family business. The stars, the deals, it’s everything Andrea grew up with and everything she ever wanted.

There’s only one problem. Without knowing it, Andrea has just gone into the monster business.

The Silverman and Kirby Agency had become one of the biggest agencies in the business by dealing with “unique” clientele early on. Monsters walk the earth, and after years of living in the shadows they did what many people do: sell everything they own and move to Hollywood.

When the movies moved on to CGI and video games-based “epics,” most monster-actors were lucky to get mall openings and beer commercials. Contracts, however, made with the immortal or the undead stretch on forever, unbreakable.

Andrea’s dream of putting together huge blockbuster films and teenage melodramas starring sexy young stars is derailed by one event, a network calls in an option on a show that would feature a trio of one-time classic monsters:

Frankenstein’s Monster, who now sits broke in a small condo in Palm Springs having lost all of his money in a dot-com scheme.

Carl London, the Wolf-Man, now barnstorms the Midwest comic-con scene with third-string aging sci-fi actors in tow.

Count Dracula has worked steadily since his immigration to Hollywood. The shape-shifter is able to conform to the tastes of every era; he never goes out of style. The one change that he may not be able to sell to the American public is that one of the largest screen “ladykillers” is anything but.

The network wants to pull them all together in an “extreme” Jackass-style show where the monsters would pull outlandish stunts on an unsuspecting public, “Freak Out.” Wolfman takes a dump on an airplane and sees how many people get sick. Frankenstein’s Monster takes to a skateboard, sliding down railways and inflicting damage that can be easily repaired in the case of a patchwork-man. Dracula is forced to dress as a woman and act like an asshole in restaurants, shopping malls, etc.

Everyone hates the idea, but all go through it. Contracts must be honored.

The pilot is completed and then the unthinkable happens, it’s a hit. Now monsters and agent have to work together again to introduce the horror icons to a new generation… 2 months ago