Comic Book Resources

SDCC - PART the SECOND

by Rantz A. Hoseley tags:

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Dear lord… the delay between posts has been unforgivable. While things have been hectic and busy beyond belief, and I’ve been plagued by sickness, I still can’t believe it’s December. My apologies (and embarrassment) at the long delay, and my appreciation to Jonah and the CBR guys for not yanking the Blog before we had a chance to wrap up the outstanding ones!

So, where was I? Ah yes, the San Diego Comic-Con.

Friday night I actually chose to try and make a smart decision showing foresight and such by getting to bed at a decent hour. Leading up to the SDCC, I had been getting an average of 3-4 hours sleep a night, and knew that Saturday’s schedule was packed solid, so without at least some semblance of a ‘normal’ amount of sleep, I ran the risk of the panel on Saturday having me look like a Robert Kirkman character. (the Walking Dead type, not Invincible, mind you). So, with a 4:30am wake-up call, I crashed at 10pm on Friday, as the 200 things on Saturday’s schedule danced through my head like moshing sugarplums hopped up on methadrine.

Part of the reason for getting up at an hour that even roosters think is too early was in order to get a much-coveted parking spot in the actual Convention Center parking structure. By the time I drove into downtown it was about 6am… and the parking structure was full. Luckily, parking structure nearby was open, and was mostly-empty so, after parking, I set the alarm on my phone for 7am and took a cat nap (Unless, that is, you caught me drooling in my sleep and then I will state for the record that it was not me, and I never slept in the car.)

 

The Line outside the Convention Center at 7am a good two hours before the doors even open!

 

The doors to the Convention Center open at 7:15am for exhibitors, to allow time to set up, get caffeinated, and pray to whatever deities you think might save you from the onslaught of people. Let me tell you this, the convention floor, without the throngs of people, is a surreal and somewhat disorienting sight. When most of your time on the floor like a participant in the soon-to-be-an-olympic sport, geek slalom, having the same space be largely absent of any people makes you feel like you’ve just stepped onto the set of some sci-fi/comic-themed horror movie that you are the star of. Like I Am Legend, except with more action figure displays, and less loaded firearms.

Having sold through most of the copies of CBT that arrived on Friday afternoon, I set up the remaining boxes and display, as well as the SDCC-exclusive prints, and started texting people to let them know where to be and at what time for the panel. Most of the time, having a cell phone is a pain in the ass… you never have ‘down’ time when people can contact you at any given moment, but I honestly could not imagine having to pull off the logistics of Saturday without it. We had a limited number of ‘creator passes’ for reserved seats in the audience at the panel that had to be given out, plus tracking Tori’s status as she came down from Los Angeles, while at the same time making sure the panel members and moderator Douglas Wolk knew where and when to meet before the panel. As I wrapped up, I got a call from Tori’s managers John and Chelsea that they were safely at the room in the adjoining hotel, and after making sure the table was staffed, passes handed over to distribute to the creators, and all the millions of other little things to be done, I headed over to the room.

Let me tell you a bit about nerves. Usually, I don’t get them. Chalk it up to be jaded, or cynical, or just plain Gomer Pyle-style levels of clueless, but really in most situations, I don’t get nervous or jumpy. On the rare occasions that I do… two things happen. I chain smoke, and I babble. For someone who talks a lot to begin with, to define your level of talking as ‘babbling’, that’s saying something. It’s a fact that Tori and her manager John know about me, having been friends at this point for decades, so when I walk in the door, yabbering away like my jaw is about to come unhinged, they looked at each other and pointed towards the balcony and told me to ‘relax and have a cig’.

It’s good to have friends. Even better to have friends who know just what to say when you need it.

While I was committing acts of lung damage, Tori and her stylist were getting her ready. I had seen her outfit a few days earlier when we were shooting all of the promo videos, and my goal in buying an outfit for the panel was driven by the thought that (while I knew I couldn’t hit the RAWK level she was bringing to the game) I could not look like my typical scruffy self. I had gone clothes shopping before driving down to SD, and settled on some high-end, but still semi-casual gear that I felt looked ‘right’. However, standing next to Tori, after we were both dressed and ready to go, I still felt like I had just rolled out of bed. The call came that the ‘handler’ was downstairs to escort us along the ‘UBER SEEKRIT’ route to the staging area and greenroom, so after quick hugs all around and blessings, we were off.

I’ve attended the San Diego Comic-Con since 1987… back when it was small, I remember when I moved to the convention center, I’ve explored all of the parts of the building. I know it like the back of my hand.

Or so I thought…

Our handler took us on a path that I’m fairly sure involved ‘the Spice’ and folding space or somesuch extra-dimensional trickery because I can tell you with confidence that the route they took us on… the tunnels and elevators and paths they guided us through… they simply do not exist. One minute we’re at the back of the building, the next we’re walking through places I can’t describe, only to magically emerge through a door next to the staging area. Puzzled and confused, I asked one of the security detail “What just happened?!” He looked at me deadpan and said “We brought you to the waiting area”. Well, they can be cagey like that if they want, but one day, I will learn their dark, interdimensional secret and then…

*ahem*, yes, anyways… at the holding area.

The last panel I was on at SDCC was at least 15 years ago. It was just after it had moved to the Convention Center, and (if memory serves) it was with Reed Waller, Matt Wagner and John Romita Jr. discussing ‘drug use in comics’. There were maybe 30 people at most in the audience, so really I had no idea what to expect for the panel in terms of logistics, crowd turnout, or what it would be like. After being escorted by the handler to the holding area, we were told to wait in the green room until they sent someone to get us. This is where David Mack, Ted McKeever, Kelly Sue DeConnick and Elizabeth Genco would meet up with Tori, myself and Douglas Wolk in order to run through what we wanted to make sure we covered on the panel. I felt slightly sorry for Douglas… he’s a nice guy, and having to moderate Tori and I, who both have a tendency to ramble, go off and tangents, and generally practice the fine art of circumlocution… well, that’s kind of like asking someone to herd elephants with a squirt gun. Tori and I agreed that if I started to ramble, she’d kick me under the table (my idea) and just as we got the details sorted, we happened to look around a bit. Within talking distance in the green room were a bunch of familiar faces. Hugh Jackman, Summer Glau, Shirley Manson from Garbage and a bunch of actors who I recognized, but couldn’t tell you who they were. Ted and I commented to each other that you could see everyone in the room, about 3 dozen in all, trying to be very subtle as they glanced around trying to figure out who was who… a very surreal Entourage/the Player kind of moment made even moreso because, in my head, I still think of Comic-con as being the event it was back in the old civic center days… about 50k people at most… mostly comics, and not the big Hollywood event that it’s become. (Yes, it’s true, I live in a town called Denial.)

 

The Panel - Douglas Wolk, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Elizabeth Genco, Tori, me, and David Mack. (you can see Ted McKeever’s chin sticking out behind Kelly Sue…)

The Convention organizers signaled for us to come with them and we followed as a group, through the back entrance to the room. There was a small curtained wall partition, separating us from the audience, so we had no idea what size the room was, or how big of a crowd turned out as Douglas Wolk took the stage in order to introduce the panel and each of us one at a time, leading up to Tori as the last one on stage. Douglas said my name, and I walked out taking a little wave to the audience, hoping my face didn’t stop smiling as I thought ‘holyshitlookatallthepeople’. Somehow I made it to the middle of the stage without tripping and turned to wait for Tori… I had thought the applause was loud before, but when her name was announced, the place erupted. All my panicky tension started to melt away and I couldn’t stop grinning at Tori as we sat down.

I say something that makes Tori crack up.

The panel was great, and Tori didn’t kick me under the table (although she did put her hand on my forearm at one point to let me know, ‘Rantz, you’re rambling’). We had 40+ creators who worked on comic Book Tattoo attending SDCC, and trying to decided which four should be on the panel took more time and discussion than the book did in many ways. The book was as good as it was because of everyone on it and, while I knew from a practical stance that we had to limit the number of people on the panel, I really wished that everyone could have been on it, just so the audience could see, all at once, this mass of talented people, knowing this was only half of the people involved on the book!
We wrapped up with a brief Q & A, and then were lead off the stage, and back to the holding area for a minute, not even really getting a chance to say goodbye to everyone on the panel before our handler whisked us off to the ‘press area’.

The press area further proved that there’s some interdimensional portal technology and trickery going on behind the scenes at SDCC, because those rooms DON’T EXIST! You’re guided through doors that aren’t there, and immediately are confronted by a line of paparazzi photographers, lined up that you have to walk past to get to the interview areas. As you walk past, the flashes pop, and the photogs yell out ‘Tori, over here, this way!’ (or in my case ‘who are you?!’) hoping to get a better angle or shot. Once you’ve run the gauntlet of photogs, there’s a series of curtained off areas for interviews. It’s the closest thing to a press junket that comics has, as the person being interviewed sits or stands in front of a wall emblazoned with the SDCC logo, various press come in one at a time, introduce themselves and try to ask as many meaningful unique questions as is possible in the 10-15 minute time limits. At the same time, there are at least 10 other interviews going on in the other curtained off areas, so there’s a constant mumble in the BG as actor X tells interviewer Y the reasons that movie Z ‘radically changes the genre’. In rapid progression, we were interviewed by MTV, Verizon’s VCast, G4, AOL, and a half dozen others. Immediately after the interviews was the signing in the Sails Pavilion, so I quickly ducked out to have a cig while Tori and her managers wrapped up the interviews and got something quick to eat.

CBR’s own Jonah Weiland interviews Tori in the SDCC Press area

Once again, the handler took us through the secret paths within the Convention Center, leading this time to the autograph area. The security and convention personnel in charge of the signing already had people lined up and ready to go… after conferring with me so that they’d know how to check whether or not people had their ‘pass’ to get into the signing. Tori’s managers and I noted that the line looked significantly longer than the amount allotted, and we had a hard time limit, so I started walking up the length of the line, checking people’s badges. We found a dozen or so people standing in line because without the signature on the backs of their badges, and most of them, when they realized they’d been busted, got out of line without comment. However there were a few who tried to BS, saying that ‘someone else’ at the Image booth had told them they could get in the line, which was complete crap… as noted previously, I signed the back of every badge that would get in to the signing, so when confronted with that fact they sheepishly made some excuse and got out of line.

Tori in the Sail Pavilion autograph area signing copies of Comic Book Tattoo

The rest of the signing went without incident, except for Joel Stein’s appearance. Joel writes for Time magazine and has a thing on HBO where he interviews celebs and people on the street, and in the middle of the signing, his crew asked if he could talk to Tori and I on camera for a minute. I’m a fan of Joel’s writing, and a huge fan of HBO’s shows, so we agreed with the condition that it be SHORT, otherwise we’d run out of time for the signing. Joel started off asking questions about the book, and when I explained that each story was the artist and writer’s interpretation of the song… what it inspired in them, and that we didn’t censor their take on the songs, he asked ‘so what if my interpretation was a naked women with huge tits, and a lot of guns?’ I noted “Well, if that was the kind of work you were known for doing, I wouldn’t have asked you to be in the book in the first place.’ Which Tori followed up with “That wouldn’t be very clever would it? And we all know you’re a bit more clever than that Joel!” which made me laugh. We wrapped up with Joel asking “OK, so if I’m an HBO viewer, and I haven’t read any comics, where should I start?”> I thought for a brief moment and then said “Jason Aaron’s Sclaped series. For folks who like the Wire, the Sopranos and such, it’ll be right up their alley… great gritty crime and modern noir with excellent flawed characters!’ So Jason, if Scalped becomes an HBO series, I’ll email you so you can make sure I get my cut… ( kid, I kid…)

Tori with CBT Cover artist, Jason “Stuntkid” Levesque

Immediately after the signing, we had a very quick meet and greet for the CBT creators who wanted to meet Tori. Originally only a dozen or so creators had expressed interest in this, but by the time rolled around, we had over 30 of them, which meant that we had to go through a very quick line, in order that we didn’t violate our time limit. After the creators had met Tori, we gathered in the area just outside the Sails Pavillion so that we could get videotaped interviews with each of the creators, talking about their stories, and their creative process. (What could those interviews be for, I wonder…?) and after a couple of group pictures, Tori and I were off again.

Panel and signing successfully behind us, it’s time for the VICTORY MOSH!

Once we were settled in, back at the room, we talked a bit about how it went, what we thought went well, what we thought should have been better or different, but overall, we talked about how great it felt. Comic Book Tattoo… the project that had started at the previous SDCC with an offhanded comment to Image, was now in the world, we’d launched the book at SDCC, and the reactions bore out our feelings that this was something special. Over the next two days, I had discussions with a number of ‘big name’ creators, who talked to me about how much they loved the book, and asked why I hadn’t invited them to be a part of it. It was flattering, but I’d always laugh and point out that ‘well, before this came out, if I had approached you, would you have been able to imagine it’d turn out like this?’ Almost all of them said no, they wouldn’t, but were quick to note that, if I did something like this again, that they were ‘in’.

NEXT UP: The POST-SDCC PROMOTION & the ORIGIN OF THE SPECIAL EDITION.

 

“Comic Book Tattoo” on “Dave Navarro’s Spread TV”

by Jonah Weiland tags: dave navarro, tori amos

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Rantz was recently a guest on “Dave Navarro’s Spread TV” to discuss “Comic Book Tattoo.” The interview, in it’s entirety, is below.

COMIC BOOK TATTOO @ SDCC - Part the first…

by Rantz A. Hoseley tags: Amoeba Records, CBT, Comic Book Tattoo, rantz hoseley, San Diego Comicon, SDCC, tori amos

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First off, my apologies for the lack of posts here. The book launch and the San Diego Comicon left the last few weeks a bit… lacking, in free time. So…

We’re going to interrupt the usual ‘making of’ blog entries, for a ‘behind the scenes’ blog on Comic Book Tattoo at this year’s San Diego Comicon. We’ll return to the usual format shortly…

THE LEAD UP…For two weeks prior to SDCC, Tori and I have been promoting machines. While we’ve been promoting Comic Book Tattoo for the last three months, the weeks prior to SDCC and the book’s release last Wednesday made that all look like a drop in the bucket by comparison. Every day was filled with back to back interviews to give, appearances to make, exclusive art to dole out, last minute arrangements to make, etc.

 

Tori and I at the Amoeba Records signing on Monday…

MONDAY
Tori did a sneak peek/early appearance at Amoeba Records in Los Angeles. 200 people got Comic Book Tattoo early and got to get their copies signed by Tori. There were lots of interviews on site, and the fine folks running Amoeba were incredibly nice, cool, and on top of all the details, making it very easy for us. A highlight of the day for me was walking down the line of people waiting for Tori to sign their book and signing their copies. Some people figured out what was going on, but others looked at me blankly until I explained that I was the editor, and that I put the book together. (I resisted the urge to be a smart ass and say “I’m just the guy with a sharpie who forgot to take his meds today!” It was difficult, but wisdom prevailed.) I had said in multiple interviews that you can’t really ‘get’ how overwhelming the book is until you have it in your hands (While being very aware at the same time that me saying so sounds like a hell of a lot of the typical PR hype). Now, the first people outside of myself, Image, Tori’s crew, and Diamond were seeing the book and their reactions were very gratifying. When you work on a project for a long time, it becomes close to you… there’s the danger that you’re not seeing things as objectively as you might, no matter how hard you try. However, the fans reactions to the book that day made it feel like ‘yeah, it’s NOT the typical PR BS, it really DOES have that kind of impact’ I drove back home afterwards to try and get a bit of sleep before…

Tori and I after the video interviews were done on Tuesday

TUESDAY
Tuesday I had to drive back up to LA for a bunch of video interviews that Tori and I were giving for about a dozen different venues. It would end up with almost seven hours of interviews with Tori, myself, and then us together, talking about the book, our reactions to it, our history together, and everything under the sun. I ramble by nature. I always come back (eventually) to my original point, but I’m an expert in the art of circumlocution. Tori’s the same way. Get us together, and talking about stuff? With 22 years of friendship and life history? Forget it, we’re off to the races (Although we might stop for a glass of wine and a mojito, then some shopping or a movie before GETTING to the races, if that makes sense.) Because a lot of these interviews were for ‘family safe’ venues, I was working VERY hard on not swearing. Anyone who’s heard me talk in person knows that I use the f-word like a comma. It’s punctuation for me. However, I was doing very good about all of this, not dropping f-bombs. Not even saying ‘shit’, which is no small feat unto itself. Tori notices this and, mid-interview stops and comments that I’m not swearing, and that led to this…

I got home exhausted and wiped out, did a half-dozen email interviews before crashing at 3am, but it was fine because I had Wednesday off, and planned on sleeping in, then heading down to SDCC with plenty of time to set up and make sure that everything was ready to run smoothly.

However…

WEDNESDAY (Preview Night…)
A work-related crisis at the last minute meant that I ended up going in to the office in the morning and didn’t get out until 1pm. After finally getting out of the office, I then rushed home to pack up everything and try to get down to SDCC in time. Between traffic, parking, picking up my badge and other joys of logistics I didn’t get to the booth until 7pm. That’s a full hour AFTER the con floor opened for preview night, and as I neared the Image booth and the CBT table there was already a line of people going back at least 60 people. I have OCD, which is a good attribute to have as an editor, but it tends to throw you off a bit, when you can’t be where you are supposed to be early, much less on time. Determined not to let being late throw me, or start things off on a sour note, I made my way to the booth apologizing for the delay as much as I could, got behind the table and started unpacking boxes and then realized there were two very big problems.

1.) No one had ordered the tickets to give to the 200 people who bought the book so that they could get in to the signing.

2.) While we had the limited editions, and the SDCC exclusive art print of the cover, we only had ONE box of the HC book. 35 boxes of HCs and SC editions were nowhere to be found.

Image quickly started trying to track them down, but meanwhile I’ve got a line of very antsy people waiting to buy books so they can see Tori. Being an editor, you realize a couple of things as you do your job. The first is; it doesn’t matter how you do when things are running smoothly, it’s how you run things in moments of crisis. The second is; as the ‘head’ of the project, you are the one that everyone looks to in order to solve problems. You no longer have the luxury of getting upset or throwing your hands up. If you want your project to succeed, you deal with it.

So, I had to make an ‘executive decision’ that pained me a bit. The point of having the ltd edition prints was in order to make some money to give to the CBT creators who were attending SDCC to help defray the gas-crisis-induced insanity of travel and lodging expenses. However, we had fans waiting, no books, and it wasn’t fair to them to tell them ‘sorry, you’ve waited an hour, come back later’, so I made the deal that if they bought the print (which was the same price as the softcover edition) AND we got books in (because at this point I had no idea if we’d even GET books in) that they could come back and get the SC for free, or the HC for the difference ($20). This way if we DID get books in, they’d end up getting a $30 print for free, and if we DIDN’T get the books, they’d have the print and be able to see Tori.

One of the few pics from Preview Night… My camera didn’t come out until FRIDAY

I signed the back of people’s badges since we didn’t have tickets (my signature is kinda hard to ‘fake’, being uniquely sloppy), and minor ‘incidents’ (the programme guide had failed to note that there was a limited allocation of tickets to see Tori given out each day in order to allow people who didn’t get to the show until Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, to still be able to have the opportunity to get in to the signing, and a few people weren’t happy with that.) aside, we got through Wednesday with everyone (pretty much) intact.

THE CON PROPER - DAY ONE: THURSDAY
I’m just going to cover Comic Book Tattoo-related stuff here, and I’ll cover general con stuff on my personal blog. Also, as a fair warning, I was getting 3 hours sleep a night (and sadly, not due to post-con partying) so if I get events/times mixed up, I beg forgiveness in advance.

Let me just say this up front. I knew from working with them that I had an incredible crew of creators on CBT. They were smart, talented, professional, and a joy to work with, but even the most level-headed individual can fray under the weight of SDCC. However, I can say this. The CBT creators at SDCC were among the kindest, most generous and helpful people I have ever known in comics. They worked as a team, supporting each other, dealing with the crush of fans, keeping their senses of humor, and never once losing their cool. I’ve been asked in interviews many times why CBT worked, and the creators at SDCC just underscored the point I’ve made over and over… we had an incredible team across the board, and I can never, ever thank these people enough.

I got to the con at 7:45am, and started to set up, when my wife called to tell me that there had been a truck that jackknifed on I-5 (the freeway that runs from LA to San Diego) Since there were rumblings that the missing books were en route from LA, the news that all truck traffic was delayed by at least 5-7 hours was… not exactly the news I wanted to hear. By 9:30am the doors were open and we immediately had a line of at least 20 people, so I walked out next to the line, and shouted so everyone could hear that we didn’t have books yet, but… and went on to explain the print arrangement. Most people had a good sense of humor about it, and I tried to keep the mood light, but it is nonetheless frustrating to not have books to sell when people actually WANT to buy them.

By 11am, I had signed 75 badges (the day’s allotment for ‘passes’ to Saturday’s signing with Tori) and we were almost completely sold out of the last 50 copies of the signed/limited editions. The rest of the day was filled with interviews, meetings, and time at the booth, and it was great to get to know some of the creators in person after only dealing with them via the internet. It was even more enjoyable that the CBT table was right next to the Pixu/5 table with Moon, Ba. Cloonan, Grampa, and Lolois. They are such incredibly talented comic creators, and have such a genuine passion for comics that you can’t help but be infected by the comics love just by being in their proximitity. At the end of the day, my two Brazilian powerhouses Kako and Peov showed up. Kako flew in fresh from winning the Brazilian illustrator of the year award (and SO well deserved) and was dazed but happy. Peov’s film had been accepted into the CCI film fest, and we had happy hugs all around at the fact that we could all be there to share the release of the book (if they’d only show up already… no, the OCD-driven editor wasn’t worried, why do you ask?)

As Omaha Perez and Mark Sable sign prints, I explain the situation… (note the energy drink)

At 3pm, I got a call on my cell that records showed that the 300 books had been delivered on TUESDAY, signed for, and between the loading dock and our booth, they disappeared. Vanished. Gone. On the GOOD side of things, I could authorize an emergency drop ship (not cheap, by the way) of books that would be there first thing Friday am, or I could wait and hope the missing books would show. It wasn’t even a choice at that point, I authorized the shipment, and told myself we’d sell the other shipment if it showed up, but at the very least we would HAVE books.

More meetings, promotion, and interviews wrapped up Thursday, and I went to dinner with comic-creating husband and wife team Leland Purvis (of Act-i-vate fame) and Elizabeth Genco (of Blue and the story Hear in My Head for CBT fame) catching up with them, and talking about comics, projects, and plans. They’ve been great friends for a couple years now, but (thank you internet) this is the first time we actually had the opportunity to meet each other in person. We went from dinner to the CBLDF/Image Comics party, since the CBT creators were supposed to be ‘guests of honor’. There we did the rounds, talking to people until I realized that “I’ll only stay an hour” had turned into 3, and I needed to get in the car and drive back to the house to sleep a bit before the next day’s mayhem.

DAY TWO: FRIDAY
Got in early Friday to the convention center in order to try and track down the shipment of books. Traci and Allen from Image got on it as well, and while we didn’t have books in hand by the time doors opened at 9:30, we knew the books had arrived on the loading dock, so… more ‘fun with prints’ while we waited for the union folk at the Convention Center to bring the books to the booth (we were not allowed to move books, otherwise, I think I would have carried every box there myself at that point) At around 10:40, the crew with the boxes of books showed up on a palette, 35 boxes of book is a LOT when the books are 12″ x 12″. Of course, NOTHING can go smoothly and evidentially the palette bumped into a guy with a cane. Now, when I say ‘guy’ I mean a person who is about 7 ft tall, weighs 400 pounds, and is not fat in the slightest. He was one of the largest humans I have ever seen, and it was obvious this man tears people apart for a living, because he proceeded to get in the shipping crews face for ‘being rude’. Loudly. ANGRILY. 10 feet away from the booth. With the books sitting on the palette next to them.

I have to admit, it took a LOT of strength to not start cracking up at the craziness of it all, with us going through so much to get the damn books, and now that they are 10 feet away, I’m not going to have them because they are no longer going to be in ‘mint condition’ because there will be convention center worker blood and entrails all over them. I overcame the lack of sleep and just watched until finally security came and ushered the guy away.

…and we had books.

Jimmie Robinson and Derek McCulloch (in the BG) frantically unpack books while myself, cover artist Jason Levesque, and Hope Larson sell and sign books as fast as we can…

Now, I knew we would sell out of CBT at SDCC. That wasn’t in question. The question for me was, once people SEE the book, how FAST will we sell out? The answer? DAMN fast. We had 3 creators unpacking boxes and getting them onto the table as fast as they could, with people buying the books as fast as they could, and another row of creators signing books as quickly as they could. Friends who witnessed it said it was like watching something out of the Grapes of Wrath, starving people scrambling for grain. I don’t know about that, but I know we sold out all of the standard hardcover editions (125 books) in 3 hours, and sold out the entire shipment of Softcovers (275 books) in less than 24 hours, as well as the last 50 of the signed/numbered/limited edition (and I know we could have sold another 50 if that if we’d had it, because I had at least that many people asking for it)
After 5 hours of the books literally flying out of the booth, our backs were sore as hell (I’d like to apologize to all of the retailers who have to cart around multiple copies of CBT. Honest, I had no idea the book would be THAT heavy!), and we were tired, but damn it felt great. Even more so to have people coming back again and again to get their books signed since we rotated the three creators signing every hour so that all 40+ CBT artists and writers that attended would have a chance to sign.

The day was broken up in the middle by me being interviewed by a crew doing a documentary on SDCC. It was the only non-CBT-specific interview I did, and it was a lot of fun.

NEXT UP: SATURDAY (aka ‘The BIG day’) and SUNDAY…

CBR TV Interviews Tori Amos

by Jonah Weiland tags: amoeba music, Comic Book Tattoo, tori amos

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Just prior to leaving for Comic-Con International, CBR’s Andy Khouri took our video cameras out to Amoeba Music in Hollywood, California to talk with Tori during the “Comic Book Tattoo” release signing. In the following one-on-one interview conducted July 21st, 2008, Amos discusses with CBR TV the origins of “Comic Book Tattoo,†the unique nature of its content, the role of women in its creation, her future plans in the music industry, and what exactly she has to do with Neil Gaiman’s “The Sandman.†Additionally, we tell Tori Amos what she can expect at Comic-Con in San Diego.

COMIC BLOG TATTOO - EPISODE 2 Shining on the Frontier - Ivan Brandon & Calum Watt on PIRATES

by Rantz A. Hoseley tags: Calum Watt, Comic Book Tattoo, Ivan Brandon, tori amos, Y Kant Tori Read

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CBT EDITOR’s NOTE:  My deepest apologies for the delay in this installment of Comic BLOG Tattoo.  I was defeated by technology.  Well, it may have won the battle, but I won the WAR…  As a reminder, the CBT crew, including Tori will be appearing at the San Diego Con next week (www.imagecomics.com or www.toriamos.com for more details)  A group of us will also be signing at the Golden Apple in Los Angeles on August 1st, starting at 6pm, so please come by and say hello.

So then.  Next up are writer Ivan Brandon (NYC Mech/Cross Bronx/24-7) and Calum Watt (24-7 and a host of concept art).  For Comic Book Tattoo, they decided to take on Tori’s song PIRATES from her first album in her Y Kant Tori Read incarnation.  I was a little shocked and surprised at the choice, but once I saw what they were doing with it, I knew it was the right choice.  Let’s let THEM tell you about it, shall we?

CALUM: When Rantz contacted me regarding the CBT I was immediately interested, when I found out Ivan was writing Pirates I knew straight away which strip I wanted to draw!

IVAN: Let’s be honest. I also begged.

CALUM: Ivan and I had worked before on 24Seven 2: Ivan writing and myself drawing directly from a regular, page by page, panel by panel script. This time we worked slightly differently.

IVAN: The thing that had attracted me to Cal’s work in the first place was the raw creativity. So where before I’d worked full-script style and spelled a lot out in terms of characters and beats and overall structure, what I really wanted to do here was just inspire Cal to cut loose and own each page.

CALUM: Ivan outlined a breakdown of the three pages, giving an overall story arc and highlighting the key areas to focus on. This allowed me much more freedom for the pacing and sequential layout.

IVAN: I wrote down the roughest ideas possible. No dialogue. Just the goal of the crew and a hint at the vantage from the room we were in, and suggestions of a handful of other worlds that crossed that point and that purpose. I made it clear to Cal that to me, nothing I’d written on the page was sacred beyond the FEEL of what we were going for. I left him completely free to transpose and reinterpret on pretty much every level.

CALUM: The trick came with balancing the more complex themes Ivan was hinting at with the bigger more immediate action of the piece whilst fitting the whole thing into three pages. The idea that the tunnel was a diverging road of times and dimensions… yeah, I kinda didn’t focus on that….

IVAN: I just sat back and winced, thinking we were trying to send the Titanic into a tiny glass bottle without slowing down.

CALUM: Well, with three pages it was going to be tight. At this stage, I wanted to concentrate on the breakdowns and solidifying the plot into panels. I tend to start of all my personal work on a square, and so at this stage I decided that each panel should reflect the format of the book.

CALUM: Once all the panels were sketched out individually (In Sketchbook Pro) I dropped them all into the page template (in Photoshop) and there adjusted size and layout. While a story has it’s own pace, I feel pages themselves add pauses, so for me it’s crucial to get the timing of the panels and pages to work together.

   

The original breakdown

CALUM: With the layout ready, I could spend some time on the character work. These were initial thoughts to allow Rantz and Ivan know which way we could go. The Pirate Captain became a female, and I nearly went with Tori’s look from the cover of the track’s album (Y Can’t Tori Read), but not being sure how well this would be received, I went with your regular old spandex wearing, shaved headed sci-fi look (obviously).

The original Pirate Captain

Initial character designs for the other crews

CALUM: Rantz and Ivan were both happy, so I was left to complete the task.

IVAN: I was ecstatic. Even at this stage Cal had created work that transcended anything I could have imagined. It was more than I could ever have asked for, but for him it wasn’t enough.

CALUM: That’s right, maybe I had too much time to think about it, but somewhere along the way something wasn’t right for me. Ivan’s story was great, but I didn’t feel I’d done the piece justice. It may be only three pages, but for a project such as the CBT it needed to be more of an EVENT!

 

Colour versions of the Pirate Captain with the lofty ambition of a fully painted strip

CALUM: With time in hand I decided to rethink my approach. The panel breakdown needed to stay the same, but I knew I had freedom with the treatment and design. Two elements came together resulting in the final approach. The track mentions Morocco, and Ivan and I had already discussed including this somehow. Secondly, the main moon panel got me looking at star charts. Together these lead me to Illuminated manuscripts: Arabic, Moorish, Celtic, Far Eastern… and I knew I could tie all these elements together to really make our pages work.

CALUM: I set about designing the ‘illuminated’ elements, creating the background and generating the panel borders in Illustrator using Arabic geometric design as a guide. The new approach required a rethink of some of the panel contents, particularly the ‘effigy’ shot of the Pirate Queen, which essentially existed in its own space.

The redesigned Pirate Queen ‘Effigy’. Colour Inspiration from The Book of Kells

IVAN: The new pages started coming in and I was floored. I’d been terrified to lose what had already been done, but what came back was a whole different animal… Cal had gone beyond the illustrative conceits and had essentially rebuilt the entire world from scratch… he’d started to speak an entirely different storytelling language I’d never seen before.

CALUM: I had to make some changes due to the new format, and I was conscious that the reader might have to work with us on the new sequences. Other changes were slightly more prosaic: I changed the last panel for a variety of reasons, not least being lack of time: downsizing from a centurion of Roman soldiers to focusing on a lone knight and his mage. I also felt the pair would be more recognisable as seekers of the impossible…

Original final panel in new layout, with the final sketch below.

CALUM: Once I’d rethought the panels, it became a regular comic job, sketching, inking and colouring pretty much as I would any job. This is all done digitally, and proved slightly tricky at the 600 dpi we were using, some of the final Photoshop pages hitting the 2 gig mark.

CALUM: Ivan then checked over the pages and returned the dialogue, this I slotted in with Illustrator, and finally, we got them off to Rantz.

IVAN: Part of me wanted the whole thing to be silent at that point. I realized what I wanted to do more than anything was to figure out how to use my words like a rhythm guitar rather than vocals. The story was there, all I wanted to do was help control the route the reader took to get from start to end.

CALUM: While the original draft certainly had the pace and action a comic book requires, perhaps the final lacks the usual conventions, but for me, has the sense of occasion I wanted, I hope both Rantz and Ivan (and maybe Tori) agree.

IVAN: This was the most unique collaboration I’ve ever experienced. I’m off to figure out where Cal and I are off to next!

CALUM: Well, we shot for the moon… who knows. I want to thank Rantz for giving me the opportunity and Ivan for bearing with my changes, and of course Tori for our inspiration.

C. July 2008

-i. July 2008

Comic BLOG Tattoo – Episode 1 Bitch-slapped by a song

by Rantz A. Hoseley tags: kristyn ferretti, mark sweeney, ming doyle, rantz hoseley, waitress

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Welcome to the first installment of Comic BLOG Tattoo, the ongoing blog (via our pals at CBR) where myself and the many and multitudinous makers of the multiple musical missives in the upcoming Comic Book Tattoo anthology tell you our respective’ behind the scenes’ tales. (That’s enough alliteration to be ‘classic’ comic form, right?) We’ll talk about what it was like working on the project, how the stories and the book came to be. The laughs, the tears, the two-fisted drama…

(It’s like the now-defunct VH-1 ‘Behind the music’ except it’s dealing with a.) comics and b.) there are no tragic overdoses or trips to rehab before the big ‘comeback.)

Since I’m up first, and since at this point I’ve given multiple interviews (including this one here at CBR) on the project and how it came to be, I thought I’d give some insight into one of the two stories I worked on. Namely, The Waitress.

Sequential script pages for Page 3 of ‘The Waitress’ for CBT, Story Rantz Hoseley, Art Ming Doyle

First off, let me say that, since Tori and I have been friends longer than she’s been putting out albums, I know all of her music REALLY well. I know songs that haven’t been released, songs that got scrapped along the way, and songs that changed radically between when they were first written, and what ended up being released. Because of that, most of the songs of hers that are my favorites… the ones that have significant emotional resonance with me, AREN’T the ‘big hits’. They are the B-Sides or soundtrack songs more often than not. Songs available in limited form. Songs that only get played every once in a great while in concert. So, the first ‘short list’ I had for songs that I thought would be good to tackle were my all-time favorites. Honey, Here in my Head, Sugar, Take me with you… songs that I related to as much for when I first heard Tori play them, as I do the strength of the song.

Now, because I was editing the book as a whole, and had to have all of the songs ‘fresh’ in my mind as I read through plot summaries or scripts or rough layouts, I had made multiple CDs of Tori’s entire discography. Part of it was to get ‘in the groove’ for the project, but part of it was also just to make sure we weren’t missing any obvious songs that we really SHOULD have as part of the book. So, I listened to the songs

…and I listened.

…and I listened.

…and I listened some more.

I began to get a bit panicky because, to be honest, I could not for the life of me, come up with a compelling ‘hook’ for a story on any of the aforementioned ‘first picks’. I listened to those songs over and over, figuring something would come to me on ONE of them, making it clear WHICH one I should do, but after weeks, I had NOTHING. Sure, I could come up with various ideas and plots, but none of them really had any ‘oomph’ or kick to them. They all felt too… how shall I put this… they felt expected. Like the obvious, boring, uncompelling option. So weeks of this, and I’m panicking. I’m telling the creators I want them to do songs that speak to THEM as individual creators, and here I am, bashing my head against a wall, trying to come up with one, good, narrative hook.

Ming Doyle’s first layouts for page 3 of ‘The Waitress’

In this frustrated, annoyed, and somewhat crazed state I drove to work one morning, and on one of the Tori mix CDs, the live version of the Waitress came on. I drove along, listening to it, and the weirdest thing I have ever had happen to me as a creator, occurred. It told me that I had to do it.

By that, I don’t mean that I heard voices telling me in a Vincent Price-esque rumble “YOOOUUUU WILL DOOOO THEEE WAIIIIITTRESSSSSâ€. (I’m a bit crazy, but not THAT far gone yet) No, I mean that, as I drove along, I saw the whole story. The fact that it would be two narratives that ran parallel next to each other on each page. One of them telling the events of the past, the narrative jumping months forward with each page, while the other sequence was set in the present… the outcome of all of those events of the past, running forward in 10 second increments per page. I saw the way that visually it would have to look, the way the past and present sequences would play off each other… the words from one adding resonance or added impact to a phrase or action in the other. Beginning to end, the whole thing, as if I was reading someone else’s comic. The dialogue wasn’t there, but I knew the beats… how many panels, the emotional weight and significance of each ‘shot’… it was, to put it mildly, really REALLY freaky. So, of course I did what any rational person would do, when confronted by such a thing…

I tried to ignore it.

I did my best to focus on the other songs. After all, while I LIKE the song, The Waitress has never been one of my ‘faves’. I love the chorus for obvious reasons, but if Tori doesn’t play it in concert, I don’t think ‘Aww man, why didn’t she play THAT?!’

I tried to think of other stories for another couple of weeks, but the narrative for the Waitress kept coming back, and with more detail each time. Dialogue was starting to gel. Situations and settings were becoming clearer, more refined.

Rantz’s futzing about with Ming’s original layout to help explain the angle and width of the last panel better

Now, Tori used to tell me, AGES ago… like during the first Little Earthquakes club tour, that the songs TOLD HER which ones to play on a given night. That she didn’t pick them… THEY picked which ones ‘would come out to play’. Like many situations in the time that we’ve known each other, where she assumes the role of the believer, and I take on the role of the cynic, I kinda rolled my eyes, and smirked, and said “Sure Tor’, ok, whateverâ€

And now here, years later, I have this damn song SHOWING ME WHAT SHE MEANT.

So, I gave into it.

Writing the script, ironically, took longer than anything I’ve ever written. Largely because of the sheer amount of detail in the script, going not QUITE ‘Alan Moore’ with it, but with a 60 page script for 11 pages of comic, it’s pretty damn close to it.

I was ecstatic when Ming Doyle agreed to illustrate the story because, while I love her art in general, I knew her style was perfect for nailing that blend between grit and surface veneer necessary to make a tale of betrayl in Hollywood between the best of friends feel ‘right’. Luckily Ming was up for the challenge of the crazy narrative style, and turned out to be one of the best collaborators I’ve ever worked with in terms of bouncing layouts back and forth, and being so open to ideas, while at the same time bringing key elements that were all her own to the tale. In terms of my own work, it’s by far the story I’m most proud of to date, and the high water mark I feel I need to ‘beat’ with everything I do from now on out. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy it as well.

On a final note about Comic BLOG Tattoo… If you have specific questions about the book, the project, or the stories, please ask away in the CBR forums! We’ll do our best to answer them. Thanks!

Finished page 3 for ‘The Waitress’ Art by Ming Doyle, Colors by Mark Sweeney, Letters by Kristyn Ferretti