T Campbell's Blog

Spent too much time yesterday in a defense of the latest GPF storyline. I thought it was something of a high point for Jeff's work... others feel differently.

Rape is an issue that every serious storyteller seems to address sooner or later, and hopefully we can learn something from each others' efforts. I'm mulling some of the points made to me in private correspondence, but the above link is my statement for now.

The Websnarkers will weigh in on the story on November 16, after their self-imposed gag order on GPF expires. (Sigh. I'm sure Jeff's not looking forward to THAT.)

Spent most of yesterday fleshing out "The Last Temptation of Randarch," an emergency fill-in story for Graveyard Greg's Gaming Guardians. I know I promised myself I wasn't going to do any more of these, but he asked so nicely.

It's going to need one FAST fill-in artist. Most of you know the drill by now: Mail me if interested.

What if Harriet Miers had not bowed out?

Lotta talk in webcomics right now about Jack Thomspon and a Wikipedia editor named Hahnchen. The former is a walking punchline whose power base is rapidly diminishing. His over-the-top arguments against video games read like a remake of Frederic Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent. Compare the two-- and then remember how much damage Wertham did to the comic book industry and how little Jack seems to be doing to anyone. Sometimes we really do learn things in fifty years!

Hahnchen is trickier. He feels the webcomics coverage on Wikipedia has become bloated and has made it his mission to clean it up. I give him some badly needed PR advice here. I don't know if he'll take it, but at least I can say I *tried* to restrain myself. I know he's doing what he feels is right, and unlike Jack, he's not actually CRAZY. His arguments against keeping the entry for The Jaded, a weekly on Graphic Smash that's currently on hiatus, do have some merit except when he clings to Alexa. (I really wish Alexa would just hurry up and die already; it stopped being reliable years ago.)

But I can't help but feel this is the beginning of the end for Wikipedia. Hahnchen is part of a new breed of editors who are applying this ethic to many different topics. And he admits he's not a "webcomics expert." Wikipedia editors have always been under-informed about the subjects they cover, and not that H. didn't do some hasty research. But when editors SUBTRACT information while admitting overall ignorance, it starts to look less like editing and more like... book-burning.

Or comic-book burning, like the kind Wertham inspired?

Sometimes we really don't learn things in fifty years.

Okay, here it is. This looks pretty good, even if Yirmumah's not your thing. By focusing on the financial side, D.J. is filling a vital need, and he's actually got some new observations and ideas instead of the standard "Holy #$%@ Randy Milholland $25K ROTFL MICROPAYMENTS ROCK/SUCK!" If he can keep up the current level of post quality, "WEBCOMIC$" might end up with more traffic than Yirmumah itself.

I think.

The announcement is a bit ambiguous.

I just dropped "the black box"... my old computer... into the garbage pile.

It feels so good!

A note to all you Craigslisters out there: do not buy a computer that comes from someone who likes to build them for fun. That makes you his sole beta-tester. And that can cause PROBLEMS.

Savgedisassmbly is working on "Crush'd" and various other Penny and Aggie stories.

Also, a record-breaking forum thread about Penny and Aggie's latest story, "The Race Card."

At the 60-post mark, I officially give up on unsolicited responses to criticism, quoting a post from a year earlier wherein Neil Gaiman learned from Anne Rice's mistake. And that's not just for Penny and Aggie, that's for everything. I'll jump in if invited, I may make remarks at some later point, and this doesn't apply to peer groups like "Savage Disassembly..." but I think cartoonists need to get a little distance from this sort of thing. Some of us, like me, are acting more like we're still in art class instead of like professional entertainers.

Where did this decision come from?

Well, actually it came from sitting in my room, typing, and wondering to myself, "I wonder how Neil Gaiman handles these situations." Ten seconds of searching later... "oh, THAT'S how."

I expect this to save a lot of time. :-)

The recluse who put out the collected edition recently? He's a fake.

Bill Watterson actually reincarnated himself as Kazu Kibuishi.

Here is the proof!

Just finished the "Divalicious" page-by-page breakdowns, and realized-- gee, "divalicious" has a lot of ghits already. Hopefully no one will mistake us for this one.

Coming within 96 hours to Graphic Smash:

Robert Young. Hivehead.
Neil Hendrick. Black Hearts.
Ryan Estrada. Joseph James Gilette.
Edward Dunphy. A Gathering of Crows.

Keep watchin'...

I've never held with the idea that Scrabble is reducible to a red bound dictionary, rote memorization and the reduction of words to character strings. There's a huge Pakistani contingent that's cleaning up in worldwide Scrabble tournaments right now, because they don't even have to know the meanings of the words they set down.

Scrabble players should know what their words mean. They should know what the language means-- and how it bends. Language is a plastic thing and confining it to a static set of letter strings-- it just seems to take the point away, to me.

Here (with thanks to Phil Kahn) is a game I played at Ubercon with Phil and Erica Henderson. Some of the creative words are mine, some are Phil's, at least one is Erica's (at my urging)-- but as far as I'm concerned, none are too sketchy to be disallowed. This is how the game SHOULD BE PLAYED.

Check out How to Make Action Move, Part Two at Comixpedia, if you want some practical example analysis and suchlike.

"Would it be nice if there was an institution dedicated to examining and lifting up webcomics to the world? Yes. Should webcomics itself be doing it? No. At least, that's MY opinion."

This comment of Scott's actually begs a huge concern of mine. But on the other hand, Kris has frequently denounced those pretentious fellows who try to use long sentences and citations to compensate for their lack of understanding.

Once you eliminate those who have done webcomics and those who do not understand webcomics, who's left? Theoretically, prominent, competent people who know webcomics well but have no interest in creating them.

Name five of those people.

Most critics are writers or wannabe writers of the thing they criticize. That's not a situation unique to webcomics, but the coziness of the medium means the social spheres overlap.

Scott seems to feel like discomfort with being criticized is unique to him. It's not. I blush every time I'm praised and blanch every time I'm criticized. ("T Campbell, he's... you know he's..." WHAT, Scott? He's WHAT???) But criticisms like these-- and The History of Webcomics-- and all the rest of the examination out there-- is not for me. It's for people who are trying to grok this thing.

It's not for you, Scott. It's ABOUT you.

And as long as you are successful, people will be interested in figuring out why.

You can't have the fame without the microscope.

(This is all concept, incidentally. I'm far less sure of myself when it comes to discussing the Examiner's execution, including my own part in it. But concept is where the discussion began.)

The last link is to a discussion of the Webcomics Examiner article where we discuss-- in painstaking detail-- many of the luminaries in webcomics history. Unsurprisingly, Scott Kurtz views his own examination with little more enjoyment than a trip to the proctologist.

Teh drama rolls on in another podcast which threatens my fragile ego. I-- uh-- THINK that they mean I'm one of the exceptions to their list of "guys who got nothin' goin' on in webcomics." Considering I'm doing business with Scott and Kris, it'd be slightly puzzling if it were otherwise. But it's ambiguous. Really, I think it just means that creators and criticism are uncomfortable bedfellows. No news flash there.

Well, I'm a microcelebrity at best. We like any kind of friendly treatment at all, really.

The series of Sheldons that begins here does a halfway decent job of turning Google into laughs. Halfway, because Kellett's gags get some of the general issues surrounding search engines right, but, well... the research on Sergey and Larry is way off. But hell, my standards are high.

If you really want to understand this kind of stuff, I recommend John Battelle's The Search. Just finished it, it's excellent.

With the first issue on the stands, this review of the preliminary event still sums up my attitude about the Crisis itself. Whatever, exactly, the new Crisis is. We don't know-- we just know that it's big, and that everyone important is either really stressed or being a really big jerk, depending on how charitable you want to be. Aside from that, the many similarities to a comic from twenty years ago makes this feel more like a Beatles reunion tour than the next big thing. I'm not revulsed, but I'm not convulsing with delight, either.

What DOES excite me is what allegedly will come after. "What works about this character for the 21st century?" That's pretty much the sort of question that *I'd* like to ask. But do you really mean it, DC Comics?

Are you really prepared to get away from patting comics culture on the back and telling it how awesome it is, and get down to the business of telling stories with powerfu, direct meaning in the world? Not "the DC Universe," not anybody's universe, but THE... WORLD? Yes, I know there have been some exceptional stories here and there, but are you prepared to declare this as POLICY?

If so, sign me right up.

As a reader, sure. And as a writer, if you'll have me.

I haven't really, really wanted to write DC or Marvel for some time, but statements like these and Marvel's "yeah, we're going to try selling FEWER mutant titles" have made me think twice.

I'll be at Ubercon this weekend, selling books, showing up in panels and generally living the high life. When I get back, some long-delayed new features at Graphic Smash and a Clickwheel report.

My main hard drive is in its death throes. Not so enormous a problem (I have a backup computer and a lead on a replacement) but it may interrupt some communications over the next week and it'll probably cost me my deadline for the ghosted book.

I'm busily recruiting for Clickwheel and Graphic Smash, but if you haven't heard from me about those yet, see first paragraph. :-)

Yesterday: 8,150 words.
Today: 10, 434 words.
Tomorrow: Bit of a break while I focus on G-Smash and Clickwheel. I'll be content with 11,000 words.

And yes, this is a paying job! Kind of job that I need to make ends meet, to be honest...

Last week, I announced that Graphic Smash was taking on more comics, including a limited number of free comics.

Now, I'm free to announce that Clickwheel is doing the same. What is Clickwheel? Short answer: the next format revolution for comics-- the iPod Photo. Shorter answer: click here.

For best results send submissions (three strips and a summary or a URL where I can find them) to my Gmail account: tcampbell1000(at)gmail.com.

After a lot of outlining and discussion, I started a ghosting project today. Hoping to be done with the rough draft by the end of the month.

Goal: 40,000 words.
Today's count: 6,652 words.

It's like NaNoWriMo, only profitable! :-)

Fans sorta-sequel. Starts today. Continues weekly for the next few months. This one's... not... NICE.

"He is [a good leader]. And so are you. When you're not yelling and acting all crazy."

--Beast Boy, Teen Titans, "Homecoming, Part II."

For fun, try substituting other words for "leader." I suggest "father," "boyfriend," "traffic cop" and "librarian."