Here is what I mean.

Alan Moore and other comic artists joining together to support #OWS is no surprise, since the comic industry is as left as the rest of the entertainment world. The comic industry previously slammed the Tea Party (although the company and writer of this particular incident later apologized; you be the judge of whether they were sincere), attacked George. W. Bush, presented the U.S. and U.S. military as evil, made an entire celebrated series out of blaspheming God and Christianity (this review of said series is actually quite good even if I don’t entirely agree with it), and has generally churned out leftist propaganda.

I no longer am scandalized at what the comic industry is doing. I expect the behavior, and I don’t envision creators apologizing for it—just as I wouldn’t have expected either Alan Colmes or Eugene Robinson to apologize to Rick Santorum for what they said about the politician’s dead child.

Leftists have made no secret about who they are, and I see no reason why we shouldn’t simply wipe the dust of their town from our feet and stop throwing pearls to them in worthless attempts to change them.

Instead, I propose we fight back.

This isn’t to say we should stop what we currently are doing; we just need to add to it. We need to promote our own beliefs as well as call the left out on its own. Hence, my proposal for a conservative OWS project.

Our OWS writing and art initiative wouldn’t simply be a response to the comic book creators project in support of OWS. Instead, our project would also demonstrate a (partial) real-world solution for those affected by our economic woes. (And that partial real-world solution would be that the people who would join our project would be able to market and sell their artwork or stories on the OWS insurgency and thus generate income for themselves).

Furthermore, the stories and artwork for our project wouldn’t have to attack OWS or its insurgents, or even directly address the matter at all. For instance, while I have a short story planned that would address OWS, I also have another one planned that would have nothing to do with OWS yet still explore a common issue—moving upwards economically. In other words, I would encourage people to be creative and to be positive.

The left isn’t going to change who it is. Therefore, I no longer see a point in engaging leftists in argument or debate. We should simply move forward and promote who we are. I want other Big Hollywood contributors (as well as Big Government, Big Journalism, and Big Peace contributors) to come on board this project, but I also am considering opening this to the general public. Those who want to join or learn more about this idea should sound off in the comments section. If there is enough support, we will move forward with additional details.

I will come right out and admit it. I am a geek. I am a hardcore geek. I revel in many different realms of geekdom. Amongst the fields where I am most comfortable with my geekdom is in comic books. I’ve been reading comics books since, well, I could read. During my early childhood, comic books were just entertainment, something to do when waiting at the supermarket whilst my mother shopped or to pass the time in line at the barber. There were the piles of Archie and Richie Rich comics that my grandparents stocked up on for the times a dozen grandkids would descend upon their house for summer vacation. In the end, I didn’t really care about comics themselves, just the ten minutes it would take me to read through whichever one was at hand. There was no appreciation of story arcs or pacing, art work and coloring, dialogue and continuity, all of these things were foreign concepts.

It wasn’t until I was about thirteen that a classmate of mine showed me that comic books were a world of their own. He had boxes and boxes of carefully stored books, each one in an individual bag with a cardboard backing to keep the spines straight. He was able to tell me about which stories were worth following, why Marvel characters were better than DC, and showed me where to go to get the best deals. I was hooked. From then on, I spent every spare penny of pocket money and any other money I earned on comic books. Throughout my high school years, I bought thousands of books, all still in their individual bags with cardboard backs, alphabetized, and organized by publisher.

The genre has changed dramatically since I started following it back in the 80s. It is, to some extent, still dominated by the two major players, Marvel and DC, each of which has its own diehard adherents, but there is now a plethora of thriving independent publishers, each one pushing the envelope in both art and with storytelling. More importantly the consumers have evolved. The geeks who grew up in the 80s, downtrodden and ridiculed by the jocks are the engine that drove the technological revolution of the 90s. They now find themselves hitting middle age flush with success at being the new arbiters of cool and that cool is the geekdom that they grew up loving; comics.

Over the next while, I would like to introduce the readers to this medium and to some of what I see as the more interesting and exciting offerings on the market today. Keep in mind, comic books are no longer reserved for kids. Many books are squarely aimed at the adult market. While there have always been those that were of a more prurient nature, today’s mature comics actually try to tell stories that evoke the same emotions and thoughts as other mediums have been doing for years. I want to share that love with you.

I will start with a brief history of what is referred to as Sequential Art.

Comics began in the late 1800s with single frames, in black and white as part of the Sunday editions of newspapers. The Katzenjammer Kids, first published in 1897 by Randolph Hearst was the first comic to be recognizable as such, a sequence of panels with balloon speech. As it happens, it’s still running today.

It would be another 30 years until the next major advance in comics would hit the scene. Following the rise of Science Fiction and Fantasy stories, pioneered by Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1929 saw the serialization of Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century as well as the adaptation of Burroughs’ Tarzan. As the Great Depression took hold of America, many people turned to movies to escape their daily troubles, others went to comic strips. 1931 saw the genesis of the most popular comic strip character of all times, Dick Tracy and his two-way wrist radio. 3 years later, Flash Gordon came onto the scene.

Around the same time, 1933, the first comic book was published; a collection of comic strips put together in a folded multiple page format. The first book of all new content came out in 1935, put out by National Periodicals. The industry was starting to grow and experiment, and it was in 1938 that a strange visitor from another planet became the first in a pantheon of heroes with powers beyond the ken of normal man. Based on a series of stories they had written six years earlier, Jerry Siegal and Joe Shuster sold the rights to Superman to Detective Comics (later DC) for a whopping $130. With the advent of the Superhero genre, the industry moved from the serialized strip wholeheartedly into the comic book era. Comics were outselling even the most popular news weeklies, some moving two million copies per issue, a huge amount even by today’s standards. The era saw Will Eisner’s creation The Spirit published. As World War II began, the comic book industry joined the fight, Captain America burst onto the scene, famously punching Hitler in the face in 1941. A year later he was joined by Wonder Woman, whose alter ego Diana Prince was in the Women’s Auxiliary Corps.

Also in the early 40s, another comic genre started to show up, one that wouldn’t really be noticed until after the war. True Crime comics, pioneered by Crime Does Not Pay, became the new rage. Lurid covers and graphic stories supposedly taken from the most violent police dispatches began to draw the largest audiences. True Crime was soon joined by Horror comics, both using drawings of scantily clad women on the cover to help move the product. As the fifties brought more and more horror comics into the market, each trying to outdo the next with their racy and macabre content, a backlash was building in Washington.

1953 saw the creation of the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, chaired by Robert Hendrickson (R-New Jersey). It was founded to investigate the problems of, of course, juvenile Delinquency. Its 1954 hearings concentrated on the popular Horror and Crime genres. The committee released their findings , which were very critical of the industry. The direct result of this was the publication later that year by psychologist Frederic Wertham, of Seduction of the Innocent; a book that is the poster child for the Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc logical fallacy. Wertham argued that, since all delinquents read comic books, comic books cause delinquency. This caused a huge backlash against the comic community. Sales fell, books were burned and publishers went out of business. The industry, in a move aimed at salvaging what they could, instituted the Comics Code. Based on Hollywood’s Production Code, it was a self-censoring move to limit the graphic depictions of violence and sexual innuendo in comic books.

One of the results of the Code was that many of the smaller independent publishers went out of business. DC was one of the few companies to survive mostly unscathed with their stable of tame superhero books. Marvel, then called Atlas, barely survived and the only remnant of the house that brought forth the most graphic horror comics was MAD magazine. The late 50s and early 60s brought us many of the most iconic DC heroes. The Flash, The Green Lantern and The Martian Manhunter showed up, forming the Justice League along with veterans Wonder Woman and Aquaman.

The superhero genre was back, and it was back in a big way. In 1961, Jack Kirby joined Stan Lee and began publishing Marvel’s new brand of Super Hero starting with the Fantastic Four. The Marvel Age of comics was underway. The Fantastic Four was followed by the Hulk and Spider-Man a year later.

Next: Comics Move into the 70s and beyond

Cross-posted at JooFood

Many comic creators dreaded the move-in of the film and video-game industry. The center of the convention center is year-by-year sprouting more and more fancy studio spaces as evidenced by towering signs and a hogging of square footage. Meanwhile, fledgling artists with books under arm can barely afford their tables though there’s still a four-year waiting list to get booth space. With maximum occupancy filled by both exhibitors and attendees only one thing can happen…prices will go up. It’s the law of supply and demand.

As I stood within my booth today a huge swarm of convention attendees mobbed a booth. There was a sea of people trying to see someone inside doing a signing. The group was so big that even my six-foot-eightness couldn’t see who it was at the table. I pulled an Elvis-wearing-a-kilt aside to ask who was signing. “Jennifer Love Hewitt.”

In the afternoon I was joined by Electric Playground’s Victor Lucas for my yearly interview. Their show provides top commentary on video games and movies long before mainstream Hollywood media got either of these mediums. They don’t understand their broadest audiences and think people want to hear more about Perez or Paris Hilton than what’s going on with “Halo.” They’re wrong.

Mainstream entertainment news vomits, then trains and audience to consume it, then complain that the audience only wants more vomit. Entertainment news is lazy, they don’t want to dig up real events and only found the Comic-Con after five straight years of the sold-out event. They probably didn’t trust their audience’s interest in comics, and it’s probably unfathomable to them that the convention would be interesting even without Hollywood’s presence.

Comics have been around since the pyramids but video games and movies are relatively new to the scene. The medium of comics will outlive them and the Comic-Con will survive Hollywood’s flavor-of-the-decade interest just fine. In the meanwhile, it’s nice to sell books with Jennifer Love Hewitt signing right next door.

I got a boost when half way through the day Jon Heder and Dan Heder came by my booth. Jon was wearing a Dan costume and Dan came as Jon. I loaded them up with books and Jon told me about his new series he’ll be doing for Comedy Central and Dan is doing CG pre-viz work on a Gore Verbinsky project.

I keep bumping into one of my favorite artists, Eric Powell, who is a great artist and a good family man. He’s living the dream with his “Goon” comic book being developed into a CG animated feature by David Fincher.

The rest of the day is too similar to the previous days so I’ll shift to my dinner party I host each year for my forum buddies. We had a surprise guest, Gunnery Sgt. Nick “Pop” Popaditch! In case you haven’t seen his story on TV, he’s the Gunnery Sergeant that took a rocket in the face while battling in Fallujah. I met his family and gave him a copy of my graphic novel Monster Zoo, which was dedicated to our troops. He gave me a signed copy of his autobiography, Once a Marine. He has a bunch of different bitchin’ false eyes he swaps out. Tonight’s featured an image of a tank with cross-hairs.

I ended the night by having a cigar with my pals on the bay as a fireworks show launched from the Del Coronado Bridge. My voice is gone. I miss my kids since I leave for the convention before they wake and come home after they’re already asleep. One more day, one more post, then it’s a wrap.

In a convention first, I ended up in a meeting at the Warner Brothers booth where I pitched a prime time TV show. The best thing about the convention is that instead of me having to scatter fifty meetings across the year to catch up on the usual folks to whom I pitch, they’re all in one room. Okay, it’s a big room, but somehow we’re managing to find each other.

At the Gotham Group/Darkhorse lunch party I met pals from Sony animation, Disney, Tyler Perry’s company, Warner Brothers, Dreamworks and Universal. Now we’re talking convenient, we got em’ all in a 30′ x 30′ room. I made my way through the mosh pit in front of the bar and ended up having three beers. They were free, and I left pretty wobbly. A few hours later I met with some executives from an unnamed family entertainment company that also has a theme park and rhymes with Schmalt Schmisney where they bought me two more drinks. So now I’m returning to my booth hammered.

I had a backlog of people waiting for me to sign my posters and I was hoping they didn’t notice my obviously slurred speech. I was hoping they just thought I talked like a normal idiot. As I document my slow descent into alcoholism this just became my inadvertent attempt at gonzo journalism. Enough of that.

Getting back to the Boba Fetts… I remembered hanging around with Jon Heder at the con two years ago when he got mobbed by a bunch of girls and fanboys. I mean they were tearing his clothes off and suddenly he didn’t like going to the convention any more even though he’s probably the most comic-video-game-cartoon savvy kid in Hollywood. But I’ve got your solution, Jon. You need to dress up like Boba Fett and you could walk the floor with only Boba Fett fans tearing your clothes off. Hey, I’m a problem solver. It’s what I do. I didn’t ask for this gift.

I ended the night by attending the Eisner Awards where my pal Ethan “Eef” Nicolle got robbed of an award. Don’t worry, pal, these awards are all fake and meaningless and a complete shame until we win one. Then they’ll mean everything. Patten Oswalt did a set announcing a few categories and he got some decent laughs. “Reno 911’s” Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant did a set and picked up an otherwise academic night of comic history and tributes.

Many of my Big Hollywood readers came over to play and it was great to meet you all. It was great to see a certain editor named John Nolte hang out as we swapped convention stories. Good people. Good times. Goodnight!

Twenty years ago a retired lady bumped into me while I was in line to see “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” when she said, “Oh, you like to draw? You should come to the San Diego Comic Con. Here’s two free passes.” She came to my booth today and I gave her a big hug.

I had over ten young industry professionals who work in comics, animation and video games and tell me that they decided to learn to draw because they liked my work. An incredible 25-year-old Russian kid said that he was raised on a pirate version of my game, “The Neverhood,” I did with Dreamworks in the mid ’90s. I looked at his comic pages and he could draw better than I could. I drew a character for him and he gave up a tear.

I’ve been on the receiving end of so many people’s kindness on my way into this industry that it makes no sense to avoid helping other up-and-coming artists and writers. One thing is for sure; there will be no shortage of great ideas funneling through Hollywood for the next generation. But talent is secondary to what’s really important, that there are people of character and substance coming into this industry that make me feel like entertainment will be in good hands as time goes on.

But let’s get away from this raw sentiment before we might actually feel something and get down to the bottom line–today was my biggest day of book sales ever. I was limping around with a bigger wad of bills than Bill Maher in a strip club.

I loved seeing Lou Ferrigno signing headshots. He looks younger than I remember and his arms are still huge. Sure, Arnold won the title in “Pumping Iron” but he’s the hare to Lou’s turtle.

Patricia Heaton and David Hunt brought the family to my booth to get some books. She’s a true friend and we’ve been working on a few pitches. I loved introducing her to a few pals I’m in business with in Japan. Just to be ironic they started taking pictures of her.

There was a panel introducing Tim Burton’s “Alice In Wonderland” and the audience went nuts when Johnny Depp made a surprise appearance. Producer Sean Bailey talked about “TRON 2.0″ and the footage made the audience erupt with excitement.

My management (Gotham Group) in partnership with Darkhorse Comics has their big yearly drink-n-schmooze then I’m going out to drinks with some Disney executives. With all of this drinking I have a great excuse to be an even bigger jerk so I’m looking forward to that.

Friday brings the Oscars of the comic kingdom known as The Eisner Awards. My buddy Ethan “Eef” Nicolle is up for Best Humor Graphic Novel with his book “Chumble Spuzz”…I’d be nervous, but then again I have a lot of confidence in his work.

Tomorrow (Saturday, when I’m sober), I’ll be on a panel from 11:00am-12:01pm talking about Spirituality in Comics. It will be in room 3. Don’t be a stranger.

Doug TenNapel (L) and fan at Comic-Con 2009

I got to meet my pals who come back to my booth every year and it’s always a special time to go face to face with my graphic-novel audience. I also do portfolio reviews of folks who are just starting to break into the world of comics. I love seeing good art, clear lay out and epic story-telling from 24 year olds. 24 year olds who can draw circles around me. 24 years who aren’t half way to dead like me. 24 year olds who, ah, heck I hate 24 year olds.

While I got soaked on mall parking it was nothing like what I paid to take my family of six to Legoland. “Wow, 20,000 blocks to make THAT!” is about all one can say during a trip to Legoland.

I did a few on camera interviews for I-have-no-idea-what-outlet so if it shows up on the Penthouse Channel I’d like to apologize in advance to my church.

I’m also nursing a broken middle finger on my right hand from a quad accident I had in Colorado three weeks ago so my hand shake is extra-limp. I like giving a firm hand shake but now I’m reduced to a squishy wet fish of a grasp that would send a chill up most people’s spine.

Most fans I talked to were clamoring to buy BONE creator Jeff Smith’s new issue of RASL. I didn’t see any outrageous costuming since the Wednesday night show is just for professionals, the press and exhibitors. This is the lightest night of the convention.

I got to talk to a few fans who had lost their jobs and were barely able to make it to the Con. The recession is hitting everyone pretty deep and while most downturns in markets past didn’t effect floor sales by a lot this year is palpably different. Oddly, I think people are nicer, looking for more intimacy behind the purchase and are doing without big budget items to come to comics for some comfort food. Maybe I’m just reading into it all a little too much, but I don’t recall ever hearing my video game industry friends saying, “Hey, it’s great to just be working.”

It’s late. Tomorrow the San Diego Symphony is performing famous video game music behind the convention which was orchestrated by our musician on the original “Earthworm Jim” video game. I can’t keep track of the cultural 6 degrees of separation that’s happening at the convention. It’s like a great convergence of everything I’ve been stewing in for the last 20 years.

It was great to meet my Big Hollywood readers who swung by my booth. So come on by and I promise to provide the best hand shake I can manage.

The last ten or so years has seen a deliberate migration of Hollywood into what used to be a convention to celebrate just comics. A general sense of grumbling can be heard from the true comic fans who resent the beautiful rich crowd carpet-bagging onto Will Eisner’s turf. But what many don’t realize is that this has contributed to the mainstreaming of comics into the rest of culture. With entertainment’s money comes stability of the comics medium, a broadening of a market, more books sold, artists, writers, publishers and bookstores able to stay alive a little longer this is good for our tribe.

But getting back to Voltron and Gumby, why does a convention that celebrates comics also have hundreds of video game consoles, movie stars, even classic 70’s cereal boxes for sale? It’s the overlap. I don’t care who are, if you loved the limited run 1980’s anime television series “Voltron” you read comics. Period. If had to roll my 20 sided dice I’d also bet my last saving throw that you also played video games.

There’s probably a real good chance that you have a throw-back t-shirt of some ancient classic like “Star Wars” and you probably owned a “Planet of the Apes” lunch box. We were raised on the peak of cheap plastic manufacturing that figured out how to get a free toy in a box of cereal while we were figuring out how to put a man on the moon.

Let’s go back to Comic-con 2005 where Dreamworks executive and marketing genius Michael Vollman rolled out a giant diesel truck on the show floor. It was covered in a giant black tarp so that one could only see the wheels of the vehicle but the logo silkscreened on the side said it all…the “Transformers” logo. Ever hear of “Transformers?” Well, at least now you do. And the word of mouth started with a potent, core audience because some savvy marketing folks knew where to find the highest concentration of “Transformer” nuts in the world. Two years later the movie comes out, two years later the sequel.

No matter if you love anime, Dungeons and Dragons, Iron Man or just dress like a Klingon, this is orchestration of those forces converging on America’s Finest City. Oh, and if you don’t have tickets you can’t come because they sold out three months ago. Scalpers are getting 400 bucks and up for passes but you can come back here each day where I’ll bring you the sights (woman wearing that Princess Leia slave outfit who should not be wearing the Princess Leia slave outfit), sounds (of money dumping on my lap by the truck-loads) and smells (mostly pungent B.O.) of the convention floor for free.

In case you’ve been in an Afghanistan cave for the last thirty years, comics are big business. Comics to film projects are in demand at least partially because of the pre-visualization aspect of the medium. Fantasy is an expensive and risky genre and comics offer the cheapest glimpse into the depiction of on-screen events before one dime is spent on production.

Though the medium is gaining visibility, comics aren’t new. They’re simply words combined with pictures that communicate a sequence of events. They’re actually very similar to the silent film where an actor speaks, then his words appear onscreen to read. We’re Chaplin like that. But my favorite part of the medium is due to it’s power, and I love me some power.

What took James Cameron 200 million dollars to communicate on film with “Titanic” or his up-and-coming “Avatar” one could do for 20k in comics. You don’t get the sound, movement or music but the actual story, lighting, acting, character development the logos could be depicted by one man on the cheap. Can’t get your “Star Wars” made for 150 million? With a small group comprised of one writer, one artist and one colorist, we could depict events from the desserts of Uncle Owen’s vaporator farm to the Death Star without resorting to overseas funding. That’s power.

So why are comics so junky? Well, like all things that came into popularity in a post-modern era we don’t exactly have the most literate authors or audiences surrounding the medium. It’s not the graphic novel’s fault that Homer or Da Vinci didn’t made comics. I think we’re in a junk food phase of entertainment where we disrespect the greats of the past to explore our own personal expression and over-the-top stimulation. Comics came into popularity at a generally bankrupt time in entertainment, but this also helps the stand outs in the medium shine all the more.

While I can count the essential graphic novels on two hands the effect of comics on culture is cumulative. There is no single “Batman” that stands up as great literature, but Batman is more of a state of mind than any one book. Spider-Man is like a logo that might as well be an American flag it is so deeply engrained into our culture’s subconscious. When a rockstar wears a Superman shirt or my son wears Hulk underwear or Guillermo Del Toro directs a “Hellboy” movie, I get the feeling we’re stewing more than just ankle-deep in comics. In fact, you cannot separate comics from American culture. It’s where we’re at.

This will be my 20th year of attending the San Diego Comicon. My 10th year of having a booth with my books for sale. Every year, the crowds get bigger, more voracious in their appetite to buy. Now I get daily visits from every studio sending out tendrils looking for cheap IPs to buy and exploit. Hollywood is hungry for material, and this medium has helped me make a good living in a tough town.

I’ll be blogging from the convention all week. Stop by my booth at 1714 if you can find me in the sea of over 110,000 people. I’ll be the comic geek in the Superman shirt–oh, never mind.

Pigman, from ProPiganda: Drawing the Line Against Jihad