Mat Nastos's Blog, page 14
October 24, 2012
A few warnings about Niche Marketing for publishers and authors
October 23, 2012
Duotrope Weekly Writer Markets List – 10/23/2012
October 16, 2012
Duotrope Weekly Writer Markets List – 10/16/2012
I get a lot of e-mail every day – 750+ pieces or more that aren’t spam. The majority of them I read but don’t respond to – fan emails, submissions, ads from Pizza Hut. You know, the important stuff that should be read but doesn’t need a response.
One of those “important stuff” e-mails is the [...]
October 13, 2012
E-Books now available DIRECT from MatNastos.Net
I have just updated the MatNastos.net online store and, for the first time ever, you can now order a number of my E-Books direct from the author.
I’ll slowly be getting all of my work up, along with all of Barry Blair’s old Aircel Comics, but for now you can grab copies of all of the Cadre issues to date (including the entire Origins of the Cadre series), plus “The Old Sergeant,” “Frank Versus the Vampire,” and “Comic Book Marketing 101″ in a number of formats (EPUB, PDF and MOBI).
Check them out and make sure to keep checking back because new work will be going up every week!
-Mat Nastos, Super Genius
www.MatNastos.net
September 28, 2012
ElfSong Rough Pages Sneak Peek #1
I’m pretty anal when it comes to my artwork, so showing off my roughs/thumbnails for the new upcoming first issue to ElfSong (premiering at the Amazing Arizona Comic Con, January 25-27, 2013 in Phoenix, AZ) is tough for me. As an artist who does most of his work in brush & ink right on the final board, I don’t spend a whole heck of a lot of time detailing at this stage because I no longer do “tight” pencil work – or any real pencil work at all. In fact, my roughs are all done digitally on my computer, where I spend anywhere from an hour to two working out the important storytelling and “acting” bits for my characters, making sure the page design works as a whole and is directing my readers’ eyes where I need them to go, and do the very important foundation for each and every piece.
Once I’m done with my roughs, I’ll print out the pages onto my art board in a light blue tone (what used to be called “non-repro blue”) and set to work making everything look finished and pretty.
What I’ve got for you here is 3 pages pulled from the story at random to give you a glimpse at what goes into the art production for each story. I’ll post finished inked pages in the next few weeks so you can compare the before and after shots of each one.
I’d love to hear what you guys think of the new work. I’m putting my everything into the pages and have found that love I had for drawing elves back when I was younger – drawing Elfquest as a fan and then as a young artist working on the official comics for Warp Graphics. It’s like reconnecting with an old friend and discovering you can pick up your relationship precisely where you left off, and the feeling is fantastic!
Make sure to check back here for more updates on the comic, and don’t miss out on ElfSong #1 (story by me and Shawn Granger, with art by me, too!) coming in Jan 2013!
Click thumbnail for higher resolution version.
September 22, 2012
My Adventures With Judge Dredd
I just came back from a screening of the new “Judge Dredd” movie, “Dredd 3D.” While I was sitting in the theater, I went back and forth between enjoying the flick and giggling hysterically to myself. The film was fun and can best be described as the Hollywood version of “The Raid” lite.
Now, that’s not the reason that tickled my funny bone over and over during the film. The reason was because I had written a treatment for almost the exact same film for the company that held the film rights to Judge Dredd almost exactly 10 years ago now.
But, let me start at the beginning and set the stage with some background on the situation, as well as introduce some of the players in our comedy.
It was 2002 and I had just moved to Los Angeles. My first wife and I were separating, and I was a bit lost with what I was going to do with my life. I was still actively storyboarding for film and TV back then and had just finished directing my first indy film, “Bite Me, Fanboy.” When I landed in LA, I hooked up with a company called Shoreline Entertainment and a gentleman named Morris Ruskin.
Now, Morris was a great guy and very knowledgeable about making movies. He was best know for putting together “Glengarry Glen Ross,” although in the years since his company had become synonymous with schlocky B-movies – direct-to-cable or direct-to-DVD horror, thrillers and comedies – the kind of movies that keep Judd Nelson and Eric Roberts . Morris hated the stuff they were doing, even though it made them a lot of money, and was always pushing to make bigger movies.
One of the deals he had set up was to co-produce a new “Judge Dredd” movie with Rebellion Studios, the video game company that had bought up 2000AD a number of years before. As part of that deal, Rebellion had sent out one of their VPs, Andrew Prendergast, to get movies made of their various properties. Andrew and I got along incredibly well as a pair of younger guys a bit out of our elements in LA.
Over the course of a few months, a few really bad Dredd screenplays came in. The production was hampered by the fact that no one wanted to be “first in” with their cash and none of the companies involved wanted to do the smart thing and pay John Wagner to write the film. The unspoken rule in Hollywood is “the more money you have, the more of a cheap bastard you are.”
From what I can remember there was a screenplay which featured Judge Death (which was more of a comedy to my eyes) and one that I described at the time as “Hey, they ripped off Dan Akyroyd’s Dragnet movie.” There may have been more that were so terrible my mind repressed them in order to save my sanity. I vaguely remember one with dinosaurs… Almost every script Morris gave me to read had Dredd fighting the corrupt legal system of Mega-City 1 and doubting his own beliefs (STUPID STUPID!).
The “Dragnet Dredd” script must have been a favorite of the higher-ups because I read a lot of revisions for it. Somehow, the revisions were worse and worse each time. At this point, becoming thoroughly disgusted with the whole situation (I had been a HUGE Judge Dredd fan since about 1980 when a comic shop in Hawaii used to get the progs for me in big month chunks of 4-5 at a time), I complained rather loudly to Morris in regards to the level of suck to be found in the script.
In typical Morris fashion he told me to put my money where my mouth was and do a re-write on “Dragnet Dredd” (he’d doing it again a year or so later when he asked me to write “Stinger”). The monkey-wrenches he threw me were, I wasn’t allowed to change the basic story AND I had to do it overnight. I stayed up for 36 hours straight and turned in a rewrite that blew goats, but was less bad than what they had. Morris proceed to dissect my script, pointing out all of the horrible bits to me…every single one of them had been on the “do not change” list from the original script.
Needless to say (but I’m saying it anyway because I love typing that old cliche out), I was pissed.
Filled with the righteous anger that gets me into constant trouble to this day, I wrote up a pair of treatments for what I thought were the only smart way to do a Dredd film, both based around Dredd trapped in a sealed off Block. The first was more horror oriented and focused on Judge Death (a story I still would love to do), and the second was what I jokingly called “Judge Dredd’s Game of Death.” My pitch had Judge Dredd and Hershey getting trapped in a Block and having to fight their way to a crime lord at the top of the 500-storey building. I even had Dredd addressing the tenants over the PA system and the criminals realizing, in a nod to the Watchmen, they were trapped in the building with the lawman and not the other way around.
When I turned in the treatments, Morris patted me on the head (metaphorically) and said there was no way it could be made because:
A) No actor big enough to carry the movie would do it with the helmet on the whole time (back then they were pushing for a younger Jason Statham) and that without showing the character’s eyes, audiences wouldn’t connect with him.
B) Dredd was too much of a 2-dimensional character to work the same way he did in the “lesser” medium of comics.
C) You had to have an origin story at the beginning so people would forget the Stallone movie.
I was told that comics could get away with a lot more because less was expected of them.
I argued that the James Bond movies were based on a two-dimensional character with no origin story – and that “black and white” characters like Dredd had been staples in storytelling since the dawn of time. The important thing, for me, was that the rest of the characters (good and evil) would be fleshed out and would play well off of the two-dimensional lead. It works for Batman, right? I also pointed out that the audience bonded with Arnold as a villain in “The Terminator” and there wasn’t a whole lot of emotion there.
It’s doubtful anyone other than Morris, and maybe Andrew P, ever saw the treatments and they were good enough to let me, a lowly comic book and storyboard artist, write for Shoreline down the road. It also impressed Andrew enough that he asked me to help write “his” version of a Judge Dredd screenplay that was a take off on the “Dead Man” stories. I do have to admit to being a bit abused by my “friend” on that one, although it did lead to me going to hang out at Jean Claude Van Damme’s house (twice) and to getting kicked in the chest by the “muscles from Brussels,” which was pretty darn cool.
The “Dead Man’ screenplay was really strong as a story, but would have sucked goat testicles as a Dredd movie, so I’m glad nothing ever came of it.
While there are an amazing number of similarities between the new “Dredd 3D” film and the 40 or so page treatment I turned in, I’m sure it was a case of “independent evolution.” I chalk it up to being, honestly, the must “DUH” way to do a decent Dredd movie. It’s stupidly obvious and I’d have been more surprised if they had gone a different route with it.
The one little thing I’d like to add is that I remember calling Andrew P a couple of years later, in 2005, when “V for Vendetta” premiered and said “See?” He agreed they had fucked up pretty royally with the call on the mask.
In my book – my small, petty, self-centered book – I call that a “Win.”
Go see “Dredd 3D” and laugh with me. Oh, next time I’ll write about how my adventures with Judge Dredd led to me coming up with the rules of six iconic moments that I based everything I write around.
-Mat Nastos, Super Genius
www.MatNastos.net
September 20, 2012
ElfSong Issue 1 Cover Preview
I probably shouldn’t be showing this off quite yet, but it’s got me excited! What you’re looking at is the colored cover to the soon-to-be-released ElfSong #1. This will be the standard cover – there will also be an Amazing Arizona Comic Con Exclusive “Sexy Moon” cover and a blank sketchcover. The line work is by your’s truly, with coloring by the supremely talented, Blake Wilkie. Blake agreed to help me out and I couldn’t have been happier about his work. Everyone should hire him right now…well, maybe not “everyone” because then he wouldn’t have time to make my stuff look so pretty. 
ElfSong #1 will be out at the end of January 2013, premiering at the Amazing Arizona Comic Con (Jan 25-27, 2013), where I’ll be signing, sketching and generally causing mischief.
-Mat Nastos, Super Genius
www.MatNastos.net
September 14, 2012
New ElfSong – Dusk, Dawn & Moon 9/14/12
As I start to ramp up for the new ElfSong comic (debuting at the Amazing Arizona Comic Con in 2013), I’m producing a lot of new art. Here are a couple of those pieces. The first is a practice piece with Dusk and Dawn, done just to knock some of the old rust off of my elf-drawing skills (skillZ?).
The second piece is my quick rough sketch for the convention exclusive variant cover to ElfSong #1 that is being released specifically for the Amazing Arizona con (January 25-27, 2013 at the Phoenix Convention Center – don’t miss it!). This is my first nude/sexy elf cover and it’s a lot of fun to play around with something a little different than I might normally do. I’ll post the finished version once we’re done.
Back to the drawing board for me!
-Mat Nastos, Super Genius
www.MatNastos.net
September 11, 2012
Doctor Who Print – X-Men 141 cover recreation
I just received this in my email inbox – the final colored version of the very first print I’ll be offering for sale at my convention appearances. This is my X-Men 141 cover recreation featuring the Third Doctor and K-9 from Doctor Who. I drew it and the talented Blake Wilkie was kind enough to color it for me. You can see more of Blake’s work at: b-studios.deviantart.com
I’ll have this piece available for sale online in the next month or so, and you’ll be able to pick it up in personal starting at the Amazing Arizona Comic Con in Phoenix, Arizona, January 2013!
-Mat Nastos, Super Genius
www.MatNastos.net
August 31, 2012
Batman The Legend Sketchcards
One of the things I’ve been doing lately (and having an absolute blast at) is sketchcards for various trading card companies. This batch was originally slated to be in a set called “Batman: The Legend” from Cryptozoic Entertainment (the same guys I did work for on the “Walking Dead Comic Series” and “DC 52″ trading card sets). Unfortunately, due to the nature of business, none of these are being used. I wound up pulling them from the set.
I had an absolutely blast drawing characters from the Batman Family – especially since I wasn’t forced to draw any of the DC 52 versions of the costumes.
Oh, before I forget, check out the upcoming DC 52 trading card set from Cryptozoic out in the next month. I’ve got a bunch of sketchcards in that set, which will probably be my last sketchcard work for the foreseeable future. Don’t miss out!
-Mat Nastos, Super Genius
www.MatNastos.net
