This week in TONY'S TIPS at Tales of Wonder...Mike Grell: Life Is Drawing Without An Eraser by Dewey Cassell with Jeff Messner; Red Sonja Worlds Away: Volume 1 by Amy Chu with artist Carlos Gomez; and Nemu Yoko’s The Delinquent Housewife!
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
Friday, April 26, 2019
TONY'S TIPS #299
This week in TONY'S TIPS at Tales of Wonder...Pre-Code Classics: The Crime Clinic Volume One, a crime comic with a difference: Ditko’s Monsters: Gorgo vs. Konga, four stories, two introductions, edited by Craig Yoe's eight-year-old son; and Marooned Lagoon by Paul Gerrish with illustrations by Scott Shaw!
Thursday, April 25, 2019
I AM LIKE UNTO A GOD OF BIRTHDAYS
If you’re one of my Facebook friends or simply someone who visits my Facebook page, you know I have a passion for posting birthdays, historical facts and remembrances. The majority of these posts are related to comics in some manner. If you’re not one of my Facebook friends, you can still see these posts. Everything I post on that page is available to the public. Except for those unsavory sorts I have blocked because I don’t have time for their crap.
My interest in comics professionals birthdays began when I wrote and edited The Mighty Marvel Bicentennial Calendar, wherein I commissioned Marvel artists to draw insane images of our heroes doing Revolutionary War stuff. One of the features of this calendar is that it included the birthdays of a great many Marvel writers, artists and staffers.
Shortly thereafter, I began sending birthday cards to those Marvels artists and such with whom I had worked. Several of them wrote me back saying it was the first time they had received birthday cards from a writer or, for that matter, anyone else working at Marvel. Of course, back then, you could buy a decent card for under a buck and mail it for thirteen cents.
I continued this practice for a time when I moved back to my home town of Cleveland. I had to stop doing it because money was tight. I wasn’t getting much work. Also, no longer being on staff at DC or Marvel, my access to addresses was curtailed.
Flash forward to 1993. Comics Buyer’s Guide editors Don and Maggie Thompson published Comic-Book Superstars, a hardcover book listing the names, contact information and resumes of comics professionals who’d filled out forms handed out at conventions. The Thompsons had a fairly inclusive notion of what constituted a professional, but what interested me most about the book was...you guessed it...that the listings included birth dates.
Doing my best Tom Sawyer impression, I suggested to Don and Maggie that they start running birthday information in every weekly issue of Comics Buyer’s Guide. If they were living closer to me, I would have also tricked them into painting my fence.
Using Comic-Book Superstars and the weekly notices, I built my own “database” of birth dates. As CBG added new dates, I added them to my database. That exploded as I “mastered” the Internet. Now I had access to many other sources as well. My database kept growing and growing and growing.
I don’t recall exactly when I began posting birthdays on Facebook or when I added remembrances and historical notes. I do know that a great many people at conventions and on online tell me how much they enjoy them. Most also express astonishment over the quantity of these I post and wonder how I manage to find the time to do it. This is where I reveal my secrets...
I start with my “database,” a Word Perfect document that currently runs 167 pages. This document has only the barest of bones of the information I post. Here is my April 24 entry...
April 24:
Boston News-Letter (1704)
Library of Congress (1800)
Annie Oakley joins Buffalo Bill’s Wild West (1885)
Allen Saunders (1899)
William Brooke Joyce/Lord Haw-Haw (1906)
George Wunder (1912)
William Castle (1914)
First Herblock cartoon (1929)
Richard Donner (1930)
Howie Schneider (1930)
Francis aka Francis Bertrand (1937)
Dick Matena (1943)
Pantera Bionda (1948)
Al Vey (1953)
John MacLeod (1957)
The Sky at Night (1957)
Randy Griffith (1960)
Djimon Hounsou (1964)
Randy Carpenter (1965)
Warren Craghead (1970)
Eric Kripke (1974)
Eric Balfour (1977)
24 Hour Comics Day (2004)
Most of the above posts were repeats from previous years. Using my Facebook “memories” and “activity log,” I cut-and-paste them with whatever updates, such as cheery birthday greetings sadly becoming remembrances, are necessary. Since I’m always adding new birthdays and such to my database, I usually have to write some new posts. The posting and writing of these usually takes an hour. We’ll get into why I do this a little further down the column.
On April 24, after I had done the above and spread out through the day, I added items to my April 25 entry. I have regular sources I check over day.
First and foremost is Maggie Thompson’s Turning Points, the weekly column she writes for Scoop. I have file folders of all her columns from August 2014 to the present. I check them to see if there are items she lists that I don’t have. When I find such items, they are added to my database.
I also check out Scoop’s weekly Celebrity Birthdays column. This has been a great help in adding birthdays for the stars of comics-oriented movies and TV shows. Not every celebrity gets added to my list. I haven’t added any stars from The Walking Dead because it’s not a TV show I watch. I may watch it someday, but not until I’m caught up on the comic books.
Wikipedia is another source for me. On April 24, after I looked at Scoop’s Turning Points and Celebrity Birthdays, I went to Wikipedia and studied its “April 25" entry. A lot of my historical notes are from Wikipedia.
You can pretty much guess what interests me by what history notes I post. I’m fascinated by true crime and disaster stuff. The Great London Beer Flood is an example of the latter. I also have a minor interest in real-life western characters. That came about because I got a kick out of how various Marvel western stories got it so wrong when it came to real-life figures.
My last stop of the day is the Grand Comics Database and its Comics Calendar. Most of my raw data on foreign comics creators comes from that calendar, though I get more information by following up on the calendar entries at Lambiek Comiclopedia.
If I come across additions for my database from other comics blogs and websites, I’ll check it out and incorporate it if it meets my standards for inclusion. But, at the risk of sounding vain, nobody in comics posts more birthdays, historical notes and remembrances than I do.
My database is not completely free of error. But, when I am informed of an error or discover it on my own, I correct it.
As to why I do this...
The history of the comics industry is all too often a tragic history of creators being screwed over by publishers, editors and even fellow creators. I’ve seen frankly terrible people try to erase creators from comics history. I’ve seen some of these people try to do it to me. But I’m not gonna let that happen to me or any other creator on my watch.
That hour-plus a day I spend on the birthdays, historical notes and remembrances is my contribution to celebrating comics creators of the past and the present. I invite my Facebook friends to share my posts wherever they like.
In most cases, we can’t do anything about the wrongs done to these creators. But we can sure as hell remember them and what they do or have done in comics. That’s worth the time I spend on this. It's s worth doing it every day I can do it.
If you want to join in this frankly holy work, all you have to do is e-mail me a few days before the first day of every third month. On June 1, I’ll create an updated document of my database and send it to any one who requests it. I’ll repeat this on September 1 and December 1. It might take me a few days to send it to every one who requests it, but I will send it to them.
This is the story of how I became like unto a god of birthdays and more. And now...I have to go change the kitty litter.
Balance is everything.
I’ll be back soon with more stuff.
© 2019 Tony Isabella
My interest in comics professionals birthdays began when I wrote and edited The Mighty Marvel Bicentennial Calendar, wherein I commissioned Marvel artists to draw insane images of our heroes doing Revolutionary War stuff. One of the features of this calendar is that it included the birthdays of a great many Marvel writers, artists and staffers.
Shortly thereafter, I began sending birthday cards to those Marvels artists and such with whom I had worked. Several of them wrote me back saying it was the first time they had received birthday cards from a writer or, for that matter, anyone else working at Marvel. Of course, back then, you could buy a decent card for under a buck and mail it for thirteen cents.
I continued this practice for a time when I moved back to my home town of Cleveland. I had to stop doing it because money was tight. I wasn’t getting much work. Also, no longer being on staff at DC or Marvel, my access to addresses was curtailed.
Flash forward to 1993. Comics Buyer’s Guide editors Don and Maggie Thompson published Comic-Book Superstars, a hardcover book listing the names, contact information and resumes of comics professionals who’d filled out forms handed out at conventions. The Thompsons had a fairly inclusive notion of what constituted a professional, but what interested me most about the book was...you guessed it...that the listings included birth dates.
Doing my best Tom Sawyer impression, I suggested to Don and Maggie that they start running birthday information in every weekly issue of Comics Buyer’s Guide. If they were living closer to me, I would have also tricked them into painting my fence.
Using Comic-Book Superstars and the weekly notices, I built my own “database” of birth dates. As CBG added new dates, I added them to my database. That exploded as I “mastered” the Internet. Now I had access to many other sources as well. My database kept growing and growing and growing.
I don’t recall exactly when I began posting birthdays on Facebook or when I added remembrances and historical notes. I do know that a great many people at conventions and on online tell me how much they enjoy them. Most also express astonishment over the quantity of these I post and wonder how I manage to find the time to do it. This is where I reveal my secrets...
I start with my “database,” a Word Perfect document that currently runs 167 pages. This document has only the barest of bones of the information I post. Here is my April 24 entry...
April 24:
Boston News-Letter (1704)
Library of Congress (1800)
Annie Oakley joins Buffalo Bill’s Wild West (1885)
Allen Saunders (1899)
William Brooke Joyce/Lord Haw-Haw (1906)
George Wunder (1912)
William Castle (1914)
First Herblock cartoon (1929)
Richard Donner (1930)
Howie Schneider (1930)
Francis aka Francis Bertrand (1937)
Dick Matena (1943)
Pantera Bionda (1948)
Al Vey (1953)
John MacLeod (1957)
The Sky at Night (1957)
Randy Griffith (1960)
Djimon Hounsou (1964)
Randy Carpenter (1965)
Warren Craghead (1970)
Eric Kripke (1974)
Eric Balfour (1977)
24 Hour Comics Day (2004)
Most of the above posts were repeats from previous years. Using my Facebook “memories” and “activity log,” I cut-and-paste them with whatever updates, such as cheery birthday greetings sadly becoming remembrances, are necessary. Since I’m always adding new birthdays and such to my database, I usually have to write some new posts. The posting and writing of these usually takes an hour. We’ll get into why I do this a little further down the column.
On April 24, after I had done the above and spread out through the day, I added items to my April 25 entry. I have regular sources I check over day.
First and foremost is Maggie Thompson’s Turning Points, the weekly column she writes for Scoop. I have file folders of all her columns from August 2014 to the present. I check them to see if there are items she lists that I don’t have. When I find such items, they are added to my database.
I also check out Scoop’s weekly Celebrity Birthdays column. This has been a great help in adding birthdays for the stars of comics-oriented movies and TV shows. Not every celebrity gets added to my list. I haven’t added any stars from The Walking Dead because it’s not a TV show I watch. I may watch it someday, but not until I’m caught up on the comic books.
Wikipedia is another source for me. On April 24, after I looked at Scoop’s Turning Points and Celebrity Birthdays, I went to Wikipedia and studied its “April 25" entry. A lot of my historical notes are from Wikipedia.
You can pretty much guess what interests me by what history notes I post. I’m fascinated by true crime and disaster stuff. The Great London Beer Flood is an example of the latter. I also have a minor interest in real-life western characters. That came about because I got a kick out of how various Marvel western stories got it so wrong when it came to real-life figures.
My last stop of the day is the Grand Comics Database and its Comics Calendar. Most of my raw data on foreign comics creators comes from that calendar, though I get more information by following up on the calendar entries at Lambiek Comiclopedia.
If I come across additions for my database from other comics blogs and websites, I’ll check it out and incorporate it if it meets my standards for inclusion. But, at the risk of sounding vain, nobody in comics posts more birthdays, historical notes and remembrances than I do.
My database is not completely free of error. But, when I am informed of an error or discover it on my own, I correct it.
As to why I do this...
The history of the comics industry is all too often a tragic history of creators being screwed over by publishers, editors and even fellow creators. I’ve seen frankly terrible people try to erase creators from comics history. I’ve seen some of these people try to do it to me. But I’m not gonna let that happen to me or any other creator on my watch.
That hour-plus a day I spend on the birthdays, historical notes and remembrances is my contribution to celebrating comics creators of the past and the present. I invite my Facebook friends to share my posts wherever they like.
In most cases, we can’t do anything about the wrongs done to these creators. But we can sure as hell remember them and what they do or have done in comics. That’s worth the time I spend on this. It's s worth doing it every day I can do it.
If you want to join in this frankly holy work, all you have to do is e-mail me a few days before the first day of every third month. On June 1, I’ll create an updated document of my database and send it to any one who requests it. I’ll repeat this on September 1 and December 1. It might take me a few days to send it to every one who requests it, but I will send it to them.
This is the story of how I became like unto a god of birthdays and more. And now...I have to go change the kitty litter.
Balance is everything.
I’ll be back soon with more stuff.
© 2019 Tony Isabella
Tuesday, April 23, 2019
COFFEE AND COMICS (April 27)
I love comics. I love making comics. I love reading comics. I love talking about comics. Every now and then, someone asks me to talk about comics somewhere other than at a convention or online. Like the “Coffee and Comics” storytelling workshop I’ll be doing for the Ohio Center for the Book in conjunction with the Cleveland Public Library. It happens on Saturday, April 27, 10:00-11:30 am at the Rising Star Coffee Roastery, 3617 Walton Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio.
Comics are a visual medium. A comics writer must know how to write a script for an artist and the artist has to know how to turn that script into art that carries the story through however many panels and pages said story requires.
Writers have to think visually and recognize what an artist can and cannot fit into a panel or a page. That often means killing one’s darlings to keep the story moving. Artists have to think about the story as well. It’s not enough to draw great pictures. Those images have to keep the story moving. Whether you’re a writer or artist, telling the story is job one.
For this workshop, I’m going to provide my “students” with random script pages for comics stories in various genres. At the moment, I plan to write pages for a super-hero story, a horror story and a romance/slice-of-life story.
While I answer questions about comics storytelling, the artists in the class will be asked to rough out a page layout. I don’t expect anyone to finish penciling a page in an hour-and-a-half, but that rough layout should be doable. Of course, where this workshop gets more interesting is what happens next.
Members of the workshop will be encouraged to e-mail their finished pages to me. I’ll be going over every “submission” with the intent of hiring one of these artists to draw an eight-page story for me. I don’t know where the completed story will appear, but the artist I choose will be paid the admittedly low rate of $50 a page for the work. I’ll retain all rights to the work, but that initial $50 page rate will be considered an advance against any future money earned by the completed story. If you come to my workshop and do the work, you could end up as a published artist.
******************************
Free Comic Book Day is almost upon us. This year, I’ll be making an appearance at a new-for-me venue. On Saturday, May 4, you’ll find me signing and talking about comics at Rubber City Comics at 74 E. Mill Street in downtown Akron, Ohio. Voted Akron’s best comic-book shop for three years running, the store will be open from 10 am to 5 pm. If you’re in the area, come on over!
Outside of these appearances, I’m sticking close to home for the rest of April, May and, perhaps, even June. I have a comics script to write for an educational institution; three years’ worth of one of my favorite comic strips to read; an introduction to write for the collection of the aforementioned comic strips; pitches to write for a medium new to me; and a somewhat personal book to write. In between the above, I’ll be working on and holding my Vast Accumulation of Stuff garage sales.
Here is the most current version of my appearance and garage sales schedule for the rest of the year...
April 27: Cleveland Public Library Coffee and Comics
May 4: Rubber City Comics (Free Comic Book Day; Akron)
May 10-11: garage sales (9am-1pm each day)
May 17-18: garage sales (9am-1pm each day)
May 31-June 1: garage sales (9am-1pm each day)
July 12-14: G-Fest (Chicago)
July 17-21: Comic-Con International (San Diego)
August 4: NEO Comic Con (North Olmsted)
August 16-17: New Mexico Comic Expo (Albuquerque)
September 21: Flaming River Con (Cleveland)
November 8-10: Grand Rapids Comic-Con (Grand Rapids)
Some notes on the above:
My Coffee and Comics workshop. I’ll have Isabella-written stuff for sale. As always, I don’t charge for my signature on items purchased from me. However, as will be rare from here on in, I’ll also sign Isabella items you bring to the workshop for free.
Free Comic Book Day. I’ll have Isabella-written stuff for sale at Rubber City Comics. In keeping with the spirit of FCBD, I’ll sign other Isabella items for free as well. Keep in mind that there are items I won’t sign, such as any of DC’s current “Black Lightning as the Batman’s support Negro” comic books.
Comics are a visual medium. A comics writer must know how to write a script for an artist and the artist has to know how to turn that script into art that carries the story through however many panels and pages said story requires.
Writers have to think visually and recognize what an artist can and cannot fit into a panel or a page. That often means killing one’s darlings to keep the story moving. Artists have to think about the story as well. It’s not enough to draw great pictures. Those images have to keep the story moving. Whether you’re a writer or artist, telling the story is job one.
For this workshop, I’m going to provide my “students” with random script pages for comics stories in various genres. At the moment, I plan to write pages for a super-hero story, a horror story and a romance/slice-of-life story.
While I answer questions about comics storytelling, the artists in the class will be asked to rough out a page layout. I don’t expect anyone to finish penciling a page in an hour-and-a-half, but that rough layout should be doable. Of course, where this workshop gets more interesting is what happens next.
Members of the workshop will be encouraged to e-mail their finished pages to me. I’ll be going over every “submission” with the intent of hiring one of these artists to draw an eight-page story for me. I don’t know where the completed story will appear, but the artist I choose will be paid the admittedly low rate of $50 a page for the work. I’ll retain all rights to the work, but that initial $50 page rate will be considered an advance against any future money earned by the completed story. If you come to my workshop and do the work, you could end up as a published artist.
******************************
Free Comic Book Day is almost upon us. This year, I’ll be making an appearance at a new-for-me venue. On Saturday, May 4, you’ll find me signing and talking about comics at Rubber City Comics at 74 E. Mill Street in downtown Akron, Ohio. Voted Akron’s best comic-book shop for three years running, the store will be open from 10 am to 5 pm. If you’re in the area, come on over!
Outside of these appearances, I’m sticking close to home for the rest of April, May and, perhaps, even June. I have a comics script to write for an educational institution; three years’ worth of one of my favorite comic strips to read; an introduction to write for the collection of the aforementioned comic strips; pitches to write for a medium new to me; and a somewhat personal book to write. In between the above, I’ll be working on and holding my Vast Accumulation of Stuff garage sales.
Here is the most current version of my appearance and garage sales schedule for the rest of the year...
April 27: Cleveland Public Library Coffee and Comics
May 4: Rubber City Comics (Free Comic Book Day; Akron)
May 10-11: garage sales (9am-1pm each day)
May 17-18: garage sales (9am-1pm each day)
May 31-June 1: garage sales (9am-1pm each day)
July 12-14: G-Fest (Chicago)
July 17-21: Comic-Con International (San Diego)
August 4: NEO Comic Con (North Olmsted)
August 16-17: New Mexico Comic Expo (Albuquerque)
September 21: Flaming River Con (Cleveland)
November 8-10: Grand Rapids Comic-Con (Grand Rapids)
Some notes on the above:
My Coffee and Comics workshop. I’ll have Isabella-written stuff for sale. As always, I don’t charge for my signature on items purchased from me. However, as will be rare from here on in, I’ll also sign Isabella items you bring to the workshop for free.
Free Comic Book Day. I’ll have Isabella-written stuff for sale at Rubber City Comics. In keeping with the spirit of FCBD, I’ll sign other Isabella items for free as well. Keep in mind that there are items I won’t sign, such as any of DC’s current “Black Lightning as the Batman’s support Negro” comic books.
Garage sales. As long as folks don’t take advantage of my generous nature, I’ll sign Isabella items you bring to the sales for free. But don’t be a dick about it. Buy some stuff.
Garage sales. There will be garage sales throughout the summer and maybe throughout September. However, I don’t schedule garage sales too far in advance because it’s likely I’ll be adding some conventions to this schedule.
G-Fest. That’s more my vacation convention than a working one. If you let me know in advance that you want to purchase something from me, I’ll bring it to the event. Depending on what I’m doing at the time, I’ll also sign other Isabella stuff for free.
Comic-Con International. I’m still not sure why I’m going to this convention, though I’m sure I’ll enjoying appearing on some panels, making new friends and reconnecting with old friends. I don’t plan on signing at the convention, but, if I do, it’ll be for a worthy charity or to bring some traffic to a friend’s booth. I suppose if Marvel asks me to sign at their booth or if there’s some specific Black Lightning event that doesn’t include writers and editors who don’t understand the character, I’ll also sign there. Within these limited parameters, I’ll be signing for free. But, if I’m signing for a worthy charity, don’t be a dick. Toss a few bucks into the collection jar.
I will be charging for my signature at NEO Comic Con, New Mexico Comic Expo and the Grand Rapids Comic-Con.
I’m not a guest at the Flaming River Con. I’m attending to show my support for the comics LGBTQ+ community. In that spirit, I’ll sign Isabella stuff for free there.
******************************
One last thing. If you’d like to have me as a guest at your event, you must e-mail me. That’s how I organize my life.
If you’d like to hire me, you must e-mail me. See above.
I don’t mind an initial face-to-face conversation or a phone call. But e-mail will still be how we seal the deal.
That’s all for now. I’ll be back soon with more stuff.
© 2019 Tony Isabella
Sunday, April 21, 2019
ALL THINGS IN MODERATION
I welcome your comments on this bloggy thing of mine. However, given the age we live in with its online spam and trolls, no comments will appear until I approve them. I try to check the inbox every few waking hours. Thanks for your patience.
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
TONY'S TIPS #298
This week in TONY'S TIPS at Tales of Wonder...I'm doing a storytelling workshop. Plus my reviews of Mallory O’Meara’s The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick; Giant Days Volume Nine by John Allison and Max Sarin; and Masao Ohtake’s Hinamatsuri Volume 1!
Tuesday, April 16, 2019
TONY'S TIPS #297
Last week in TONY'S TIPS at Tales of Wonder...Man and Superman 100-Page Super Spectacular by Marv Wolfman with artist Claudio Castellini; Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #1-2; and Exorsisters by Ian Boothby and Gisele Lagace!
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