Who's Who In The CBU Update 2008
Who are... Park and Barb?
Barbara Lien-Cooper writes the comic GUN STREET GIRL at Panel 2 Panel, was an original founder of Sequential Tart, is the managing editrix of the 2004 Eisner award-winning print magazine COMIC BOOK ARTIST, and was named by Mark Millar (The Authority, Ultimates, Wanted) as one of the three most promising new talents in the next wave of comics writing.
Park Cooper started writing about comics at the now-defunct DC FANZINE website.
It’s A Very Modern World
By Park Cooper
We went to Wizard World Texas, the convention in Arlington, outside of Fort Worth. The first thing we did (aside from making some copies of my resume, now that I’m looking for new work) was find our colleague Drew Edwards, writer of Halloween Man (http://www.halloweenman.com). He’d just gotten married to Jami Deadly (http://www.deadlycurves.com), and we wanted to congratulate him in person… Among other places, they registered on Amazon… of which I highly approve.
Here’s my own wish list, in case anyone wants to get me anything for Christmas a little early:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/registry.html/104-9117895-7208714
We got the happy couple a Grant Morrison Doom Patrol collection, and passed along something not requested-- the Titan collection of Alan Moore’s HALO JONES.
Anyway, we caught up with Drew, went out to the main floor, bought a little on-sale manga… Barb’s a sucker for the very old-school horror manga BRIDE OF DEIMOS…
Then we met some very nice people at Beckett Comics (http://www.beckettcomics.com), like Jeff Amano. We traded work: we gave him a preview of the first 7 pages of HALF DEAD (all you get right now is three: http://www.speakeasycomics.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1371&sid=b2ee3de70afdf7d229d41f7f6f6e7e3d), and he gave us his RONIN HOOD OF THE 47 SAMURAI… and Beckett’s GANGLORDS OF CHINATOWN, too.
Each of these graphic novels will be fully reviewed by Barb at a later date, but I’ve read RONIN HOOD, and I can say: it’s better than what most comics are doing these days.
We also introduced ourselves to the folks at Viper Comics.
We moved on… I tried playing a preview of a new Ratchet and Clank videogame, but found the graphics surprisingly sub-par and the whole thing frustrating. I shook hands with Margo Kidder, which I thought would be nice to do, but I’m afraid we were each sadly unimpressed with the other. We looked for new artists to collaborate with in artist’s alley, but everyone either wasn’t good enough, had art that was demeaning to women (a ready-to-explode-with-sexuality Catwoman lapping milk out of a bowl on the ground), or, mostly, were doing their own thing and nothing else.
A friend of Drew’s did give me a mini-comic I enjoyed: The Adventures of Moon Man. (http://www.gnourg.com/books.html). Basically, it’s the ongoing adventures of Xitix Zorr, the Moon Man, a powerful being who goes out of his way to not be a hero, even though he is constantly finding tape cassettes that tell him exactly how to do so. He listens to their Mission Impossible-like instructions, and then does whatever he feels like doing, which is always the opposite of what he’s told-- not rescuing people, in general. I liked it.
Aside from that, though, about the most fun we had aside from talking to Drew and Beckett people was talking to Randy Lander of The Fourth Rail in front of Drew’s table.
After that, we spent the evening with Drew and his editor and their wives… then we went home.
After that, our time has been taken up with culture and business, since culture is our business… we discovered that the Pang Brothers made up for THE EYE 2 with THE EYE 10 aka THE EYE: INFINITY… I watched the Japanese zombie/rock’n’roll flick WILD ZERO and Barb and I both enjoyed it… Barb watched the rather good English suspense movie TIME WITHOUT PITY…
But we’ve done a lot of business. Our progress of proposing manga pitches is going well, I’ve got an artist starting pages on a work of my own, progress is being made on the art for all our other projects, like the graphic novel we’ve got coming from Sonic Publishing (http://www.sonicpublishing.com).
All I really need now is a job.
Say… you’re on the internet… perhaps YOU could give me a job. I can write comics, edit comics, and do all sorts of other things. I put out this announcement on a few appropriate fora lately:
ATTENTION COMICS CREATORS ON THE WEB:
I am Park Cooper of Wicker Man Studios (GUN STREET GIRL, Speakeasy's HALF DEAD, and other projects we haven't announced yet). I'm looking to get into editing. I'd like even more experiences on my resume about editing creative properties. So...
Got dreams and mad art skills, but don't know the difference between your and you're, or its and it's? Spelling not your field? Or perhaps you've seen this trait in other comics and you just want to make sure this doesn't happen to you?
Creators in the big leagues have ideas and art skills, but they also (well, some of them, anyway) use something you don't have: an editor.
Good as you may or may not be, sometimes it can be hard to spot problems in your own work because you're just too close to the subject matter. You can look at things over and over, but a pair of fresh eyes comes along and sees right away that in panel three you spelled their as "thier".
I'm offering to edit your comic in exchange for: the right to mention that I do so on my resume, and perhaps a link from your site to Wicker Man Studios and its properties. Or if you didn't want to link, you could just pay me; I'm very open to that as well.
I'll edit the text of your comic, and do whatever other proofreading or editing you may need (a business letter, perhaps), but I won't try to take over the writing on your comic. I'm just offering my services as an editor.
I've taught 7 years worth of basic college English classes as I taught my way in teaching fellowships through post-graduate school, I've taught English/Language arts in public schools for over 4 years. I assure you that I'm qualified to do this.
I am addressing this to "Comics creators on the web" so as to include webcomics but not exclude other comics. The part that's important to me is that everything be done through email, and nothing be done postally (unless you pay me, to which I'm extremely open).
Please write to me about this opportunity at parkgsg@hotmail.com.
The only taker so far has been the creator of http://www.cy-boar.com, so I took him up on him taking me up on it… but I could handle another… anyone want me to edit their comic? Or hire me to do anything else?
I’d like to write you a comic, if you like…
http://www.panel2panel.com/gsg-archives.html