Brian Fies's Blog, page 17

Words, Images & Worlds

Here's that other podcast I alluded to: "Words, Images and Worlds" with Jason DeHart! I didn't know Jason before he asked me to guest on his show, but we have many mutual friends and he's just about the most prolific podcaster I've ever seen. Seriously, he's done hundreds of them, with some very impressive creative-type people. Also me. 

I enjoyed our conversation very much, and if you have 23 minutes to kill, you might too. Thanks, Jason.

October Sky By The Minute

I also drew their logo.

I seem to have a good side hustle in the prestigious, lucrative world of podcast guesting! I shared one podcast link a few days ago, and today drops the latest episode of "The October Sky Minute," the podcast that reviews the wonderful 1999 movie based on Homer Hickam's bestseller "Rocket Boys" one minute at a time, hosted by my friends Jim O'Kane, Hal Bryan and, for today only, me.

I love the movie and love Hal and Jim. The point of the podcast isn't to just talk about the minute of film on hand, but to invite interesting people for interesting discussions. To that end, they've landed many stars from the movie, Homer Hickam himself, and others including the president of the Estes model rocket company and an expert on picket fences (for an episode in which an errant rocket takes one out). Can't imagine why they asked me, but we ended up talking about parenthood, chemistry lab, model rocketry, and "Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow," so not the usual stuff from me. It was a nice genuine conversation and I think that comes through.

I did an entirely different third podcast that should be released soon. They were actually all recorded over a long stretch of time but are dropping pretty close to each other. I'm not doing ALL the podcasts, it just seems like it.

Dare to be Great

Here's a podcast I did a few weeks back with my friend, Shawn Langwell, about creativity and purpose, titled "Dare to be Great, Dare to be You."

Shawn is a local writer, as is his wife Crissi, and he gives talks and writes books in the general areas of success, motivation, confidence, self-improvement, etc. If you're interested in hearing me drone on for 54 minutes and 3 seconds about my thoughts on creativity, self-expression, fear of failure, and why I don't want to read your comic ripping off Lord of the Rings, this is the podcast for you! 

And I can understand why it wouldn't be. I just listened to it and even I'm sick of me. But Shawn is a good host and I think we had an interesting, real conversation.

Thanks, Shawn!

Rocketeer Catalog Launch

The cover of the exhibition catalog. It was a great show! Although all the auction pieces have been sent to their winning bidders' homes, CAM still has a fantastic exhibition of Stevens's original art.
I had a nice afternoon and evening in San Francisco yesterday, participating in the Cartoon Art Museum's launch party for its Rocketeer Exhibition Catalog, which commemorates an exhibition of "Rocketeer" cartoonist Dave Stevens's original art as well as tribute pieces drawn by other artists, including me, which were later auctioned off. Proceeds from the auction benefited both CAM and the Hairy Cell Leukemia Foundation in Stevens's memory. About a dozen contributors came to meet fans and sign catalogs assembly-line-style. 

I arrived more than an hour early just so I could walk around the waterfront and play tourist in San Francisco, because Why Not? The brown lumps in the foreground are hundreds of sea lions that have taken over some docks in San Francisco Bay. The multicolored lumps in the background are hundreds of people on Pier 39 watching them bark and bellow. I'm on Pier 41, which I had pretty much to myself.
I love the Musee Mecanique, tucked into a warehouse in the back corner of Fisherman's Wharf. It's a haphazard collection of old arcade machines ranging from the 1800s to Pac-Man. Admission is free, most of the games cost 25 cents to play. I spent $2 and had a wonderful time. Highly recommended!
Dave Stevens's sister, Jennifer Stevens-Bawcum, who oversees his archives and creative legacy, blessed the project and attended last night as well. She was lovely. I got to touch base with some friends (including the generous Scott Burns) and meet a couple of new ones, which was lovely too. CAM hosts Andrew Farago, Summerlea Kashar, and Ron Evans made us feel welcome. 

An unfortunate shot of Jennifer Stevens-Bawcum, for which I apologize, but I'm posting it because it's one of only two photos I took of the evening and it provides a nice overview of the signing set-up. Next to Jennifer is syndicated cartoonist Jonathan Lemon. Next to him is the space where I sat, and beside me was Denis St. John from Charles Schulz's Creative Associates. Behind Denis are Tom Beland and Jon Bean Hastings, and the ponytail behind Jennifer's shoulder belongs to Brent Anderson.

Cartoonists Jon Bean Hastings and Tom Beland held down the end of the horseshoe of tables. The gent standing in the background to the right of the "Gorey" sign is artist Steve Leialoha.
Here's a photo of me, Jonathan Lemon, and Jennifer Stevens-Bawcum taken by my friend Scott Burns, with cartoonist Chuck Whelon and Tina Whelon standing at right in the background.

My page--37, for anyone who's curious.
We signed a LOT of catalogs, which CAM is selling online and on site. The museum itself is worth a visit if you enjoy the graphic narrative arts. A great event in a great institution!

Alcatraz and a gull who had no fear of, or really any interest in, me. A fine day on the Bay.

Amazing Adventures

Lifetime Goal Unlocked!

In 2023, the Amulet imprint of my publisher, Abrams Books, put out a book titled Marvel Super Stories, an anthology of short stories about Marvel superheroes done for middle-grade readers by cartoonists who don't usually do superhero comics, such as Jerry Craft, Nathan Hale, Lincoln Peirce, and Maria Scrivan. You may not know all those names, but 8- to 12-year-old kids devour their graphic novels. 

Shortly after that book was announced, it came up in conversation with my editor at Abrams, Charlie Kochman. I said I thought it was a great idea, and it would be a real thrill for me to do something like that someday. I was a Marvel comics reader from the age of 10, and at one time I'd collected every "Avengers" comic in print, going back to issue #1 from 1963. In my late teens and early twenties I wanted to draw superheroes professionally, and submitted work to both DC and Marvel. I got some encouraging replies and even a tryout, but nothing came of it. It would be a lifetime bucket-list achievement for me, I told Charlie, if I ever got to write and draw a Marvel comic.

"Well, we're doing a Volume 2," Charlie said something like. 

"Oh yeah?" I replied, slow on the uptake.

"Send me a proposal," said Charlie, "and we'll see what John (Jennings, Amulet's editor) and Marvel say."

"But I'm not a middle-grade author," I said, arguing myself out of a gig.

"You actually are," Charlie said, pointing out that Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? won an award for best astronautical literature for young readers and was picked up by Scholastic, and The Last Mechanical Monster made the American Library Association's best graphic novel list. Even Mom's Cancer won a youth literature prize. 

"Oh yeah!" I replied, still slow.

Each Marvel Super Story is six pages long, plus a couple of pages introducing the character. I drafted a script, drew finished black-and-white art for the first three pages, and hit "Send." A while later, I got word: I was in!

My story stars the Avengers featuring the Beast, a furry blue mutant who began as an X-Man but later joined Earth's Mightiest Heroes. I set the story in the era of MY Avengers, which the Marvel folks told me I needed to address because the Avengers' roster and headquarters have changed a lot since I was young. A caption box on Page 1, explaining that this was a tale from the team's distant past, did the trick.

Two Avengers covers featuring the Beast from back in my day.

I won't say more, except that a couple of other Avengers also show up and I didn't get to use my first choice of villain because someone else had already claimed it. Luckily, the Marvel editors suggested a substitute villain, a very deep cut from the Avengers' earliest days, who worked out even better! 

It was an interesting challenge capturing the proper tone. Light, lean, clear. The Marvel editors had a few notes that helped me find it. I also realized I'd have to draw smaller than I intended to achieve the right balance of detail in the art and legibility in the lettering. These were easy but necessary adjustments. An invigorating creative stretch!

Although the story is meant for young readers, I didn't condescend. I wrote and drew an Avengers tale I would have done if Marvel had hired me when I was 24 and said, "OK, we need to fill six pages in the back of the next issue, what've you got?" As far as I'm concerned, my story really happened. It fits with the chronology and mythology. To me, it's canon.

I did these renderings of the Beast for the cover, which unites all the superheroes appearing in the book drawn by the artists who did their stories. The cover designer gave me a rough idea of the pose they needed and I returned two slightly different options that I thought would fill the space well. Part of the Beast's arm is missing because I knew it would be hidden by the "E." 

Marvel Super Stories: Amazing Adventures comes out October 22. I can't express how delighted I was to contribute to it. Comics can be serious nonfiction adult literature. They're a medium like film, TV, theater, print, radio, etc. that can tell any type of story those other media can. You can't do books like mine if you don't believe that.

But sometimes comics can and should just be fun! There's nothing wrong with that, either. Especially if it checks a big item off your bucket list!

Karma

In today's installment of "People Who Have No Clue How the World Works," meet billionaire Gina Rinehart (right), the richest person in Australia, who is leaning on the National Gallery of Australia to remove a portrait of her (left) by indigenous artist Vincent Namatjira.

If she'd kept her mouth shut, the painting might have been seen by a few thousand people in Canberra instead of millions around the world, and she wouldn't have revealed herself to be a thin-skinned humorless bully.

I've never heard of Ms. Rinehart but can't help but think Namatjira captured the essence of her soul. 

I love it when people who deserve it get hoist with their own petard.

See also: The Streisand Effect.

Star Wars

May the Fourth.... 

Quiet rainy Saturday, so Karen and I sat down and watched "Star Wars" this afternoon (at her suggestion!). The original REAL Star Wars, that is. It's the first time I've actually seen the whole thing in many years. I have thoughts:

It's delightful! The first film had a lightness of spirit that later films--and certainly Episodes 1, 2, 3, 7, 8 and 9--lacked. I kept coming back to the word "whimsy" and what a careful touch it takes to pull off. Whimsy isn't about jokes and funny characters; other Star Wars movies and series had jokes and funny characters, but remained as self-serious as a dirge. The tone of the first one was unique. I miss it. 

Everyone was so young. In three years, Star Wars will be 50 years old. Fifty years before 1977 was 1927, the black-and-white silent era of "Metropolis" and Charlie Chaplin. I'll just let you sit with that a bit.

Carrie Fisher was amazing. 

The first 30 seconds of Star Wars remains one of my greatest cinematic moments and memories. It's impossible to convey to someone younger what a thunderclap the Star Destroyer soaring overhead and going and going and going and going was. We'd never seen anything like it. Movies would never be the same. Narratively, those first shots also tell you a lot: we see a small spaceship desperately running from an enormous, angular, brutalist gray spear tip. Before we meet a single character, we know who the underdog good guys and tyrannical bad guys are, and which ship to root for.

In retrospect, the sequels and prequels (such as "Rogue One") just don't fit together with this story. To the extent they do, they depend on the subtle, nuanced performance of Alec Guinness. He was working on another plane than the other actors, and entire movies were wedged into a single sideways glance of his. When Kenobi says "I don't seem to remember ever owning a droid" or tells Luke about his brave betrayed Jedi father, he gives a look that suggests there's more to the story. At the time, there was NOT more to the story. That's all Guinness.

Half the look and feel of the Star Wars universe comes from its thoughtful sound design. This viewing I was especially struck by the sound of the Death Star, a kind of echoing thrumming mechanical heartbeat that makes it sound like you're in a moon-sized space station even though you only actually see little bits of it. The new Star Wars rides at Disneyland smartly use those same sounds to great effect, building whole environments around them, knowing that they're embedded in our collective subconscious. No other universe sounds like the Star Wars universe.

I really enjoyed my revisit to that universe. Although we watched the "Special Edition" with some modern effects, there was enough of the original look and charm left to take me back nearly 50 years. It's been a fun ride.

The Pubs Biz

Print wonks and friends curious about how publishing works: this article, "No One Buys Books," summarizes good and interesting information that emerged from Penguin Random House's recent attempt to buy Simon & Schuster. Among the bullet points:

--In one year, out of 58,000 titles published, 90% sold fewer than 2000 copies.

--In the same year, 50% sold fewer than 12 copies. Read that again: Half of all books sold less than a dozen. 

[EDITED: In comments on Facebook, author Rebecca Solnit questioned this number. Surely just the author's relatives alone would account for a dozen sales! The figure came from the Department of Justice as part of its antitrust action but nobody knows how they arrived at it. One industry expert says the percentage of books that sold fewer than a dozen copies is more like 15%. Either way, it's a big, sad number.]

--Out of every 100 books published, 35 are profitable. 

--Most books don't earn back their advance against royalties, meaning that the money an author receives at the beginning of a project is probably all they'll ever get. 

--Publishers are very hit-driven, looking for the million-selling unicorn. The problem is, it's very hard to tell in advance which those will be, so they place a lot of bets on books and authors that turn out to be duds. Penguin Random House said that the top 4% of titles drive 60% of their profitability.

--The closest thing to a sure bet are big names like John Grisham and James Patterson, as well as celebrities, musicians, and sports stars, but even they can surprisingly tank. Singer Billie Eilish's book sold 64,000 copies in its first eight months, which would be a fantastic number for me or most authors but a big disappointment if you're a publisher expecting Eilish's 97 million Instagram followers to pick up a copy.

--A publisher's backlist of old books can be a gold mine. Eric Carle's Very Hungry Caterpillar has been on the bestseller list for 19 years. 

MY TWO CENTS: All of this matches my observations and experience, and none of it surprises me. If anything, I'd say the situation is more dire in my graphic novel niche.

I won't discuss my sales numbers, I figure that's between me and my publisher, but I am happy to report that each of my books has sold more than 2000 copies, so I'm in the top tenth percentile already. Yay me?

Most of my books have earned out their advances, such that I get a modest royalty check a couple times a year. One of my books never will, so I'll never see another dime from it. Yay me again?

It's certainly possible to be an enormously successful graphic novelist. Dav Pilkey and Raina Telgemeier do very well for themselves. My publisher, Abrams, puts out my friend Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, and I have no doubt that his 300 million copies sold make it possible for Abrams to take risks on books they might not otherwise, including maybe mine.

Don't write books thinking you're going to get rich; don't write books thinking you'll support even a lower-middle-class lifestyle. I began Mom's Cancer as a webcomic 20 years ago, and Abrams published it in 2006. If you divide the money I made from four books, plus random short comics for anthologies and such, over the past 18 to 20 years of what I'd call professional authorship, I earned WAY less than minimum wage. During much of that time, I had a day job; during that ENTIRE time I had a supportive spouse who had a good job with benefits. That's the dirty little secret of how most writers survive.

The numbers are discouraging. As they say about most people in most arts, the best reason to do it is because it's simply something you must do to have a happy, fulfilling life whether the money follows or not.

Fred Weisel

Here's a good article from our local newspaper, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, about a friend of mine. I worked with Fred Weisel (or as I know him better, "Jonas," because he's a fancy writer with different pen names he uses for different purposes) in a small science-writing firm, where he was my boss and editor. 

He was one of the best editors I've ever had, one who could not only instantly spot the problem in something you'd written but knew exactly how to fix it. Since that company went out of business--gosh, more than 20 years ago!--our careers have followed similar arcs as freelance science writers and then as book authors. We still get together for lunch every couple of months to compare notes and gripe about our publishers (kidding, Charlie!). There aren't many people I can talk shop with and he's my favorite.

The hook of the article is that Jonas, who writes mysteries set in our local Wine Country, recently won the prestigious Nero Award for Best American Mystery Novel of the Year! He beat bestselling authors with big publishers who actually have marketing budgets. For an obscure author with a small independent publisher, it's an astonishing accomplishment. If there's any justice, he won't be obscure for long.

Jonas told me one of my very favorite stories about being a writer. I'll give the short version but his is better. In his first book, Jonas had one character kill another with a grape knife, a short curved blade used in vineyards to harvest wine grapes. But he wasn't sure if that would actually work, so he went to the hardware store to buy one. 

"Odd time of year to buy a grape knife," said the clerk, making conversation. "Oh, I'm not harvesting grapes," said Jonas. "I just want to see if you could use it to kill someone." The clerk's face went ashen as he slowly backed away, and Jonas was in the parking lot before he realized why. 

Writers.

Enterprise Ahoy!

The 3-foot studio model of the starship Enterprise today, as discovered in an abandoned storage unit, a little worse for wear.
This is the feel-good story of the decade for me and what I imagine is a very small subset of my friends.

When the pilot episode for the original Star Trek series was shot in 1965, the starship Enterprise was a 3-foot-long model. The better-known 11-foot model, which is now on display at the Smithsonian, was built later, when the series was picked up for production.

The 3-foot Enterprise was used some in the early days, including the title "Swoosh" shots shown throughout the series, but was eventually retired and ended up on Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's desk, where it remained until 1979, when Roddenberry loaned it to the studio making "Star Trek The Motion Picture" and it vanished.

After its days as a working prop, the model graced the desk of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry until it disappeared in 1979. One way the modern experts authenticated the rediscovered model was matching the wood grain of the display base seen in this photo.
Nobody knew where it was for 45 years. Had it been stolen, lost, destroyed? One rumor was that Roddenberry's son, Gene Jr., nicknamed "Rod," had thrown it into a swimming pool. It was a cosmic mystery: Where was the original Enterprise?

I don't want to brag, but I always had a pretty good idea what had happened to it, and I knew how it would eventually turn up. I figured it would surface as soon as the guy who in 1979 said, "Hey, this is cool, I'll take it home!" died, and his survivors had no idea what to do with it. 

I think I was pretty close. Several weeks ago, under circumstances that remain murky, the model turned up in an abandoned storage unit. Someone bought the contents, innocently listed the model on eBay, and Trekkies went nuts. A crack team of Star Trek model experts, people who'd worked on the TV shows and movies, authenticated it. It was the real deal. 

The model with William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy in early publicity photos for Star Trek.
It had also taken some wear and damage; one of the experts speculated that it had been dropped at some point. The two long cylindrical engines have a noticeable sag, which brought a smile to the face of everyone who'd built the Enterprise plastic model kit as a child, because it was nearly impossible to keep those things straight. Turns out it was pretty tricky on the real one, too!

The 3-foot model also had a cameo in the Star Trek episode "Requiem for Methuselah," in which Leonardo daVinci (yes, that one) shrank the ship and everyone in it down to a handy desktop size. Not one of the better episodes.

In recent days, all the parties have worked out a deal to return the model to Rod, who remembered seeing it around the house as a child. Rod has vowed to have it repaired, restored, and displayed for the public to appreciate it. Maybe at the Smithsonian next to its larger sibling?

For fans of the original Star Trek and its creators, particularly the brilliant Matt Jefferies who designed the Enterprise and established the look and feel of 60 years of Treks that followed, it's a happy day. Kill the fatted tribble! The prodigal starship was lost and is found! The Enterprise has come home.