Guitar Friday: Phoning it in.

by M A N

Sadly, time is not my friend, so not much in the way of Guitar Friday this week. However, I at least wanted to share this image of the Jay Turser Shark Guitar as a gesture of solidarity with Beth Riesgraf and her "Sharker" concept.

If, like me, you believe that "Sharker" is made of undiluted WIN, then show Beth your support by posting images or links to things that look like, but in fact are not, sharks in the comments.

Consider this an open thread to get your weekend started.

Writing: 360 Degree Character Reviews

Occasionally, LEVERAGE writer Albert Kim will regale us with stories of the horrible traditions and kabuki of his previous corporate life. He recently explained the idea of the 360 degree job review. You are reviewed by:

1.) Your bosses
2.) Your peers
3.) Your underlings.

I started doing this as a way to develop characters, and I have to admit I kind of dig it. How does Indiana Jones's boss at the university feel about him? Other archeologists? His students? How about the bad guys? "Major Arnold Toht is the best commandant I've ever had. He never sends us into dangerous situations without also taking the same risk. He is very organized and makes sure we have the tools and resources necessary to serve the Fuhrer. We always go to interesting places, and he really encourages individual initiative. His determination is an inspiration to us all ..."

More fun is a recent bit of development I've been doing for villains and heroes -- flip them. Take a page and write about the villain as if he's the protagonist. I don't mean the anti-hero protagonist, I mean the "I admire this character and want to see him succeed"protagonist. Doing this with even minor characters can open up new interactions. What this does is force you to come up with virtues for your bad guy, even invent some -- otherwise, he's not a hero, is he? (I recently psyched myself out of using a character as a villain, because I wound up becoming too invested in his non-villainous personal life.).

Years ago another writer taught me a simple exercise -- describe a character, hero or villain, as his best friend would describe him while setting up a blind date. Then do it from the point of view of the co-worker who hates his guts and is unloading to his wife after work, or finally has a chance to sink him with a job recommendation.

All these things take advantage of the fact that we understand the world around us through narrative. We already create heroes and villains, shade them, set them against ourselves and each other in our own lives. We already have a storytelling vocabulary. We just need to understand it's as valid as a formally defined system.

Waid Wednesdays #16: The Dictionary Is Wrong

Writing this one on the plane from La Guardia to LAX, so it may or not be posted by Wednesday depending upon how late the flight gets in.

In 1990, having recently departed my editorial position at DC Comics, I went to work for Archie Comics in Mamaroneck, NY as an assistant editor/proofreader/colorist/cover gag editor/researcher/monkey. And I would be lying to you if I said that I didn’t believe it, at the time, to be a step down. How had I gone from editing BATMAN: GOTHAM BY GASLIGHT to checking to make sure Betty’s hair was the right color yellow on every page of PALS & GALS? Was it only yesterday that I was helping proofread THE KILLING JOKE?

Dumb attitude. First off, the people were all terrific. Okay, the two gentlemen who who owned the joint and who were as close as brothers right down to owning identical cars and yachts, were [NOTE: OPINIONS EXPRESSED ON THIS BLOG DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE OPINIONS OF BOOM STUDIOS, JUST SAYIN’] erratic tyrants with hair-trigger tempers who would have sued an old lady out of her dentures if they’d only had the time to spare...but the managing editor, Victor Gorelick, was a patient guy who knows where more bodies are buried than most anyone else in comics, and he was always encouraging me to all the crafts involved in making comics. Most importantly, he set me up to learn a critically important lesson in storytelling.

In case you haven’t looked at an Archie comic book since about 1952, trust me, there hasn’t been much innovation. As it was for your parents’ parents, most every story remains between five and seven pages, with no more than six panels a page and generally only three on the first page (to allow room for titles and, when the Archie execs choose to run them, credits). Big, simple lettering and big, simple balloons accompanying big, simple art. This is not the format in which to attempt WATCHMEN.

I asked Victor for a shot at writing a story and, once we found a pitch he liked, he set me loose. I’d come to him with the idea that Riverdale High was searching desperately for a new assistant coach, and by far the most qualified candidate was a female basketball star who’d been confined to a wheelchair by an accident. The conflict in the story is from loudmouth Reggie, to whom it must be proved that a “girl in a wheelchair” can teach him anything about basketball. The new coach, of course, eventually gets Reggie past his “handicap,” as she puts it--his ego, which compromises the team. Hardly Dostoyevsky, but consider my target audience.

Anyway, I had six pages. About 28, 30 panels. And it took me longer to write the first half of that script than it has anything else to this day, because by the time you set up the problem (“We need a new coach!”), show how desperate the staff gets once the first few candidates prove unsatisfactory, ramp up the tension, and introduce the woman in the wheelchair, you’re already on page three. Of six.

And while the resultant solution (and lesson) is no doubt obvious to the experienced among you, it was only when I sweated my way into it that I realized one of the most fundamental rules of comics storytelling: start the story as late as possible. I didn’t need an extensive setup. I didn’t need scenes of tryouts or debates. What I needed was this:

PANEL ONE: Exterior, Principal Weatherbee’s office. Weatherbee and Coach Kleats, peeking out his door towards a group of ill-suited coaching candidates awaiting an interview, are visibly worried.

KLEATS: So, Waldo...how many of them do you think could do even one chin-up?

WEATHERBEE: Out of THESE applicants? One BETWEEN them...maybe...

PANEL TWO: Bee’s assistant sticks her head into the office.

KLEATS: I wish Coach Clayton were back from his seminar! He’d know where to find a gym coach!

ASSISTANT: Next interview, Mr. Weatherbee!

PANEL THREE: ROBIN GANTNER, an athletic woman in a wheelchair, enters the room, big smile on her face.

ASSISTANT: Her name is...

GANTNER: ROBIN GANTNER, Mr. Weatherbee! If you’re looking for a girls’ gym teacher...then I’m your woman!

I repeat: hardly Eisner Award-winning material, but efficient. I wrote a handful of additional Archie stories that year, each one easier to wrestle into submission than the last. I kept each premise increasingly simpler, started each scene as late as I could at ended it as quickly as possible. Dialogue was trimmed to the bone without losing the funny. And that training served me better than any other I’ve ever gotten. It’s easy to write long; it’s a bitch to write short. It was a terrific workshop. It would have lasted longer except one of the owners, livid, stormed into the bullpen one afternoon demanding to know who’d changed a word in a classified ad they were placing. I took the heat calmly, certain that he’d simmer down once I explained that I’d made the fix to correct a misspelling. He looked skeptical, so I cheerfully showed him the right spelling in the dictionary, ready to put his mind at ease. Instead, he screwed up his face in unbridled rage, slammed the book shut, and screamed, “THE DICTIONARY IS WRONG!” I ended the scene as quickly as I could by immediately turning in my keys and peeling out of the parking lot, never to return. It was a memorable ending. Not a beat was wasted.

Edited to eliminate the in-air brainslip of IDing the owners as brothers. They weren't, really, but we always thought of them as such.

Edited AGAIN to fix a typo that put Mamaroneck in NJ and not NY. Apologies to both states.

What if Leverage Were a Sitcom

Good Lord, I love the internets.

In Answer To the E-Mails.

Of course I'm really drinking in that video. How could I pass up an excuse for Bushmill's in the morning?

LEVERAGE Season 2: Things Are Not Going Well

(courtesy IF Magazine)

Cocktail Party Physics

Female science writers range far and wide, distilling some pretty heady stuff down into charming, readable explanations and discussion. Kind of my new favorite discovery. Don't miss the physics-themed cocktails. Going in the sidebar toute de suite.

Guitar Fridays: Gibson ES-335

by M A N

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of guitar designs in the world. But of all of them, from your run of the mill Strat copies to Prince's rare and unusual "Sign" guitar, the Gibson ES-335 is my favorite.

The 335 was designed to help reduce the feedback that was common in Gibson's larger hollow body guitars. Though it still maintains that delicious womanly hour glass shape of the hollow body models, the depth of the 335 is much shallower (known as a semi-hollow body). As you you can see in the image, there are two F holes (much like a violin) that show the hollow inside of the guitar body. This helps shape its distinctive sound.

It has a maple body with a set* mahongany neck and rosewood fingerboard. Most 335s have a fixed bridge though it isn't uncommon to see one with a Bigsby tremolo system. The Bigsby trem is the spongy predecessor to the "whammy bar" and is used to add vibrato (personally, I'm not a big fan of the Bigsby but there are many players who love it). The two humbucker pickups help give it the range it needs to go from thick, weeping solos to crunchy rhythm instantly.

What I love so much about this guitar is it's versatility. The 335 is just as comfortable on stage with smooth jazz players like Larry Carlton to throw down rockers like Dave Grohl. This guitar can do it all. Just take a look.

Going Home -- Ten Years After with Alvin Lee, live at Woodstock

All My Life -- Foo Fighters Dave Grohl is using his own custom 335 (the DG-335) in this clip. Just listen to how BIG that axe sounds! You can hunt buffalo with this guitar!

Room 335 -- Larry Carlton (Mr. 335 himself) and Steve Lukather I can't recommend their album "No Substitutions: Live in Osaka " enough.

Sweet Sixteen -- B.B. King playing the most famous 335 of all, Lucille. This particular performance has a lot of cultural significance as it was part of the concert that took place in Africa celebrating the "Rumble in the Jungle" fight between Ali and Foreman. B.B. at his best, indeed.

As a little bonus, here's B.B. live at Sing Sing prison in 1972. Yeah, that's the blues.


* There are a few ways of attaching the guitar neck to the body. A "Set" neck means it's attached to the body via a dovetail joint and adhesive. "Bolt on" means it attached with heavy screws. "Neck thru" means the single piece of wood that makes the neck extends thru the body of the guitar.

Ephemera 2009 (7)

-- Better Off Ted handily fills my entertainment requirements for 22 minutes. Good geek comedy.

-- (Sawyer thinks) >> (Jack reacts). Somebody's being very meta over at Lost. Much to my approval.

-- In just two days, the file-syncing software Dropbox has revolutionized my workflow. Dead easy to use, great interface, solid tutorials and guides. I love it.

-- For what it's worth, I cannot believe I just used the word "workflow."

-- Despite my unhealthy love of my Kindle, I recently spent lunch in a used bookstore Chris Downey found near work, and bought a couple vintage 1948 hardcover mysteries. Not much on style, but man those bastards could plot.

-- It turns out there IS a maximum number of pages you can type per day. Ow.

-- I rarely do follow-ups on the mini-posts, but I've mentioned the Lovecraftian police procedural The Translated Man (also available on Kindle) before, and it deserves more than that glancing blow. There was a day reading this that I wanted to be able to read faster, because I wanted it in my brain faster. Blind sonar-using forensic maidens! Teen sidekicks practicing forbidden geometries! A skin disease that turns you invisible! Foppish gentlemen detectives dual-wielding pistols! A frank discussion of the shortcomings of adding a third leg to your shuffling undead behemoth! The heroes fight frikkin' science crimes. I WANT TO GO TO THERE.

-- Setting aside my innate fondness for Wil Wheaton, his series of posts about DM-ing a game of Dungeons & Dragons for his son and his friends pleases me to no end. They are, in the end, about a father sitting down at a kitchen table, for hours, teaching and telling stories with his son.

-- The news that there is now a retractable version of the Uniball Vision pen matters to no one ... except those few of us to whom it matters more than our mother's love.

-- There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

Waid Wednesdays #15: What Matters

There used to be a Triangle Rule in comics. I first heard it from one of my mentors, the brilliant writer/cartoonist William Messner-Loebs. I've repeated it many times since, and God only knows who first articulated it, but it supposed this:

There were three qualifications for making good in comics--talent, personality, and the ability to hit a deadline. That was your triangle. The theory was that very few comics professionals were gifted with all three of these super-powers, but as long as s/he possessed any two of these traits, steady work was all but a lock. If you were insanely talented and likeable, you could probably skate by for a while on the punctuality hurdle; there was a point where Neil Gaiman was so overwhelmed that he was faxing Sandman scripts in one page at a time, which he could get away with 'cause he was Neil Gaiman. Likewise, comics was crammed to the rafters with C-level-talent drinking buddies who were unbelievably reliable about getting their scripts or art in on time, and clockwork geniuses who had the social skills of a filing cabinet, and they all got by--maybe not on the A-list assignments, but they put food on their table.

Before you whoop up and down that you've just snagged a career because you're two for three--you're always punctual and your friends tell you you're a hoot--I warn you that the 21st Century has not been kind to the Triangle Rule. First off, FTPs and e-mail have become such a part of the work-delivery process that human interaction and visits to the office to get face-time with your editor are rarer than ever, so your winning personality counts less. Secondly, yes, we're still in the periodical business--even with one-off graphic novels, someone somewhere is depending on you to make an eventual deadline, even if it's just your landlord--so missing a deadline is never, ever cool, but so long as you stay in contact with your editor and keep the lines of communication open rather than ignore phone calls or e-mails, you can probably work something out. (Just remember, it is a thousand times more forgiveable to blow a deadline if you alert the editor ahead of time that you're having trouble than it is to drop off the radar and leave the editor hanging.)

But most importantly, there are very few places in comics these days to build your career and quietly hone your skills, so it's not enough to be talented. You have to be talented right now, out of the gate. Part of that's because a bunch of jerks like Grant Morrison, Darwyn Cooke and Ed Brubaker went and drastically raised the bar on the definition of the word "talented." Part of that's because readers expect way more from a comic that costs twice what it cost six years ago. Part of that is because, chances are, your work will be collected in a trade paperback that will stay in print a long, long time. And part of that is because there now are far, far more comics reviews sites online than there are people who actually love comics and are not willing to snark your reputation to a bloody pulp just because snark is easier to write than actual criticism.

Wait, it gets worse. You have to be talented right now, and you have to sustain that talent. Not only is competition for the gig is at an all-time high, but the economy isn't exactly encouraging readers to be patient with comics they might grow to love. Sorry to add to the pressure, but one or two bad jobs can take a fast toll on your career.

Mark Waid the BOOM! Editor-In-Chief just wrote 400 words on how meeting deadlines was your most important reputation-builder, and he wants to scream bloody murder at Mark Waid the Freelancer for throwing them out in lieu of what I'm about to say--because no one else says it, ever--but while you don't want to be a prima donna with your attitude and you don't want to get fired for never delivering on time, the God's honest truth is that, in the long run, the quality of your work is all that matters.

Long, long ago, when I was a Boy Editor at DC, I once asked my boss, Dick Giordano, about what it was like to work with Neal Adams, who he'd long been partners with and who had a legendary reputation (earned or not) for never, ever, ever, ever meeting a deadline. "Didn't editors lose their minds when Neal would do his disappearing act?", I asked. Dick just chuckled and said, "Yes. Yes, they did. And they'd be furious with him, and they'd swear never to hire him again. But six months later, they wouldn't remember how late his work was. All they'd remember was how good it was."

This was, frankly, kind of a dangerously stupid thing to tell an impressionable young editor working in the periodical business...but (a) Dick's gift for candor was one of the qualities that made him the best and most valuable mentor I ever had, and (b) he was right. And he's just gotten more right in the intervening two decades. I cannot name names without embarrassing them, but I can just off the top of my head think of at least a dozen freelancers who hit every deadline ever asked of them, even if that deadline was changed on them without fair warning... who were pleasant to work with and always professional even if their editor was a jerk...and who always did exactly what their editors asked them to do, even if it was obvious to a blind man that the quality of the finished work was lessened, because they were trained to believe that their first priority was to serve their editor and do so in a timely manner.

All of those people have been unemployed for years.

In the long run, the quality of your work is all that matters. That is your only resumé. Be professional. Make sure your editor or publisher can always reach you. Do what's asked of you if your conscience can bear it. But know that, five years from now, as fans or prospective employers are looking over your published pages, no one will care that this story sucks because the publisher moved the deadline up or because the editor made you work an android cow into the story. All they will care about is what they see in front of them, and they will hold you responsible for it, no one else.

Don't be defiant. Don't be difficult. But the Triangle Rule no longer holds, so most of all, don't think that if you simply jump through enough hoops and fetch enough drinks, that'll still buy you a career. Be good at this above all else. Stand up for your work, and never, ever let anything get in the way of you doing your very best. You may end up crossing swords with an editor and leave him or her thinking you're difficult or unhireable. That editor may even be me. But if you never listen to another thing I ever say, listen to this: the Career Graveyard is fence-to-fence full and three deep with freelancers who believed that making a positive impression with their editors was more important than making a permanent impression with their work.

******
End of lecture. A couple of other bits of business:

(1) If you like what's said here, I refer you to my daily blog over at markwaid.com, where these essays (reposted a day or two later) are accompanied with podcasts, videoblogging, and other various bits of commentary. Come for the funny pictures, stay for the sense of moral outrage.

(2) I'm all over the comics shops in the next few weeks if you're inclined to pick up one of my books to see if I'm really even remotely qualified to pen how-to's like these. Potter's Field: Stone Cold (a detective story with artist Paul Azaceta) hits today; The Incredibles #1 (with art by Marcio Takara) hits next Wednesday; and Irredeemable #1 (with artist Pete Krause), the story of how the world's greatest superhero became the world's greatest supervillain, debuts two weeks from today. There'll be more coming. You can get 'em at your favorite comics shop or order them directly from BOOM! Studios.