Looks who’s on the Vegas strip. When we say Giant Tess is a high roller, we really mean it!
Patreon + Paypal = Party!
…Maybe not a pool party, but a party nonetheless! Patreon has announced that you may, once again, use Paypal to subscribe to NSFW creators (like me) on Patreon. For the backstory, read my post on Webcomics.com. If that was a roadblock for you in the past, consider the road wide open!
Tokyo adrift, Part Two
Last year this week, my family and I took a trip to Japan to visit Tokyo and Kyoto. On Tuesday, I talked about our first day in Tokyo. Today, I’m gonna share some more stories.
While we were in Tokyo, we caught the subway to the Tsukiji Fish Market, and spend a good portion of the day kicking around down there. My older son, Alex, has become an adventurous eater, so this place was awash in temptations for him. He finally settled on a package of tentacles and a large bag of salty Mackerel babies that he happily munched on throughout the day. One of the biggest tourist activities in Tokyo is showing up early to watch the tuna auction, but it meant dragging the kids out of bed at a ridiculous time of the morning (3 a.m.) to see it, so we decided against it.
If you’re comics fan, you’ll love Japan. Its culture embraces comics fully. Heck, walk into an 7-11 (one of the few places you can use the ATM) or the Japanese equivalent, Lawsons, and you’ll find phonebook-sized manga right up front. (If you’re under thirty, you may have to Google “phonebook,” but trust me, it’s a big, freaking book. And if you’re a fan of Japanese sex comics (hentai), you’ll find that just as easily as you find the rest of the manga. No Victorian-era hang-ups about sexuality here.
One of the museums we visited even had an installment dedicated to manga and Japanese cartoonists. Along with some jaw-dropping original art, there were some truly charming cartoonist workstations where kids could sit and draw.
Speaking of comics, our boys were overjoyed to find a mini-Dragonball-Z attraction inside one of the Tokyo malls — not too far from the Pokémon store that had my younger son, Max, utterly enthralled. Not only could we see some awesome Dragonball art, but we could buy tickets to an interactive, walk-through Dragonball game.
Needless to say, we bought our tickets and kamehameha’ed ourselves silly.
One of my favorite stops in Tokyo was Akihabara Station — a veritable wonderland of electronic gadgets, games and pop-culture goods.
It was here that Max spotted this… a rare Charizard (Pokémon) action figure. Now, I had tried to locate one of these back in the states during Christmas, but I had failed. Seeing it here sent us on a quest.
We searched the store, top to bottom, but couldn’t find Charizard anywhere. So we went to another store and another, and another). When we were finally ready to admit defeat, I went back the the store that we originally saw the figure — only to learn that the toy had been discontinued. (Which explained the difficulty I had in locating it over Christmas). I’ve seen it on Amazon and eBay, running anywhere from $300 to over $400. I used the very apex of my Midwestern Charm on one of the sales clerks, but, alas, they weren’t interested in selling the floor model. We left Charizard behind.
Meanwhile, Alex and I made many return trips to Akihabara Station — usually in the evening while everyone else was recovering from the day. We’d hit the subway, shoot over to Akihabara, and just wander.
Advance Your Art
I was recently interviewed for the Advance Your Art podcast, hosted by Yuri Cataldo, director of Business of Creative enterprises in the Department of Marketing Communication at Emerson College in Boston. Advance Your Art focuses on arts entrepreneurship, so it was right in the wheelhouse of what I discuss at comic conventions, Webcomics.com, and, often, here at Evil Inc.
Our conversation went deep into a wide range of topics, including…
Why do I introduce myself as a cartoonist? Because I love watching the confusion on people’s faces when I do. My uncle’s reaction to my being a cartoonist a few weeks ago was similar to the reaction you’d get if you told someone you have cancer: “Oh? Well… <shrugs> I’m sure you’ll be OK…”
My introduction to comics. I tell the story about how I got hooked on comics when one of my uncles — a trucker — brought a box of coverless comics from the drugstore on his route. If I had gotten to the coverless Playboys and Penthouses he had stashed in the bottom of the box, however, I might have never paid much attention to the comics.
Why there’s no such thing as talent. In fact, I think telling a young person that they’re talented is harmful to them. I explain why.
The importance of a college education to a cartoonist — but not the way you think it might be. Also, we talked about some of my favorite formative books on cartooning from my childhood — including How To Draw Comics the Marvel Way and The Complete Book of Cartooning.
How I got started in newspapers — and, later, made the switch to webcomics. It all started with an editorial cartoonist — Bill Day — giving me some life-changing career advice: “Don’t sit around waiting for someone to die.”
The (un)importance of ideas. Here’s another artistic concept I think we get dangerously wrong. We focus on getting an idea instead of putting our creative energies towards the really important stuff — executing the ideas we do have in a new and innovate way.
Why I don’t talk about new projects.
The early days of webcomics: The “free” comics fallacy and the Print vs Web wars. If you missed the first part of the 2000s in comics, you’ll want to hear this.
The rise of adblockers: The business of webcomics is in flux as we speak. We talk about what’s working and where the industry is going.
How can newspapers survive? I lay out a very simple plan. Really.
The stories behind the creation of Evil Inc, Courting Disaster and Phables.
How the “How to Make Webcomics” book came about — and, later “The Webcomics Handbook.”
The importance of knowing how to run a business is just as important as learning your art.
How to do social media better. Ironically, the thing that makes you great at art also makes you lousy at social media. And if you want to read even more on this topic…
My guest post on the Patreon blog
I stand second to no one in my love for Patreon. So, when they approached me about writing a guest post for their blog, I eagerly agreed. I chose to talk about something near and dear to my heart — social-media marketing. In particular, I noticed something about creative people and their approach to social media, and that is this — the very same thing that makes them excellent creators can make them struggle with social media.
To that end, I wrote this post for Patreon identifying exactly what that thing is — and, better yet, how to fix the problem!
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