Messages

"1. Well, the process of script selection could be some pagan ritual for all most people know. Why not tell us what its like, I'd love to know. Otherwise people tellto fill the blank spots in themselves. "

That's a bit silly, really...   I, and many other people, *keep* saying over and over that script selection (at least in terms of newbies) is down to quality.  There's no mystery to any of it.  'Filling the blank spots' is completely redundant: there are no blank spots to fill.  You've got to ask yourself why I, Tharggle, Matt Smith, and *everyone* who knows what they're talking about would keep saying this stuff unless it was true.  

More-or-less agree with the rest of what you said.  I certainly didn't intend for this thing to wind-up being so long and protracted (who ever does?), I just like people to know the way things are.  Individuals who refuse to accept the simplest and most obvious solution in favour of dodgy conspiracies that taint everyone who went before and screw with everyone who wants to follow just get my goat.  End of story.  End of banana 'discussion'.  End of whole sorry thread.

"I just don't understand why your getting pissed off with a bunch of wannabe writers, who lets face it are several million miles behind you on the comic writers evolutionary scale. Unless of course, you think their comments are somehow a slur on your own work or the hard work its taken to get where you are at the moment."

I'm not getting pissed-off about it so much as slightly dissapointed.  Believe it or not I'm keen to encourage new talent and new writers - if it weren't for a handful of various people who encouraged me and told me where I was going wrong (and no, I *don't* mean 'scriptdroids') I'd have come completely a-cropper by now, and it's good to give something back to the world.  Corny, but there you go.  I just think this "it's not fair!" attitude prevalent amongst submitters at the moment is completely damaging to individuals who need the time and comfort to grow and develop without the niggling suspicion that it won't make any different because the whole thing's a lottery and blah blah blah.

Plus, I have to admit that it pisses me off when people imply that I only got to where I am thanks to a series of astonishing flukes.  Fuck 'em.  I worked hard, I learnt a lot of lessons.

As for me getting involved in this sort of debate, it's a thorny question that I've been thinking about quite a lot.  For all my sins, I was already a voice in the various Internet communities before I started working with 2000AD.  What pisses me off more than anything in the world is that people seem to assume I merit special attention for that reason alone: take this week's Future Shock.  It was okay.  Had it been written by any other writer in the world nobody would have thought twice about discussing it - maybe some flippant comment somewhere about it being not-too-bad.  Fine.  But *just because it's me*, I'm forced to trawl through all this bollocks about "oooh, lame execution, couldn't you have done it like this, let's pick it apart with a fine toothcomb, blah blah de fucking blah."  I've nobody to blame but myself because - as I'm demonstrating right now - I find it very hard to sit back and stay-out of discussions involving myself.  Accept my assurances that I'm trying my hardest to limit my presence on these forums and it's only in moments of a) drunkenness, b) pathetic clingyness or c)furious vitriol that I decide to contribute.  Given that I was recently ditched by my g/f I've spent much of the last few weeks in a state combining a), b) and c), which may go some way to explain the plethora of postage.  
Shutting up now.

"Well, you're right in that I suspect the process for commisioning scripts doesn't revolve around being "fair", and that claims that it does are just as delusional as claims of a "secret writers club" conspiracy."

Then I rest my case.  Nothing I can say to change your mind, it's just a shame that all the other people who aren't too far gone and who *could* benefit from the knowledge that quality will out are going to grow a little more bitter and less-likely to grow creatively every time they hear your 'suspicions'.


"You yourself provide evidence that both persistance and managing to be in the right place at the right time are factors in getting published, and thats AS WELL AS skill, not INSTEAD of it."

Of course persistance has something to do with it, but not in a "if I send 50 subs sooner-or-later they'll HAVE to commission me" way.  Persistance, in my case, worked because every time I was rejected I tried to understand WHY.  It's a process of growth, not of stubbornly refusing to believe that there's anywhere left to grow *to* and just sending sub-standard idea after sub-standard idea and trusting to the law of averages that one day it'll be 'my big chance'.  And I don't buy the 'right place at the right time' bollocks: the pitchfest prize wasn't a confirmed 'this will be printed', it was just a sneaky way of bypassing the slush pile and saving myself a few months' waiting time.  I still had to send the script to Andy and develop it with him.  I don't want to sound nasty and, as you say, this conversation would be a lot easier to have over a couple of pints (Dreddcon3, if it happens), but at the moment I can't help but read your posts without imagining a definite taint of Scojoesque whingeing in the metaphorical tone-of-voice.  At the end of the day, you've proved that nothing I ever say is going to convince you that the process is fair.  Fine.  We can both move-on.  But please, please don't go dragging-down other prospective talents who need the benefit of knowing that if they work hard enough and grow enough they *can* succeed.

Of course I was exaggerating about the Secret Writer's club...

And I appreciate that it must be incredibly difficult to deal with a form letter response to a future shock.  I certainly don't advocate an immediate cessation to creative frustration.  My only point was that more and more I'm seeing posts from people - here or on [scriptdroids] or wherever, in which people say "Ah, well...  Just had another rejection.  I'll keep trying, of course, but---".....   And then you can feel free to insert whatever semi-humourous throwaway comment first comes to mind which indicates that in a tiny festering part of their suspicious mind the writer would secretly, dearly *love* to believe that there's an enormous conspiracy going-on and that there's nothing remotely fair about the whole process.  It's like a damage-limitation device, designed to soothe the pain of yet another rejection.  I've been there - shit, I've had more rejections than most.  I even had the colossal temerity to attach a little paragraph to the bottom of one of my earliest sub-letters suggesting politely that maybe Mr Bishop wasn't being entirely fair with me and wouldn't he like to, y'know, look a bit closer?  The response was ice-cold, and it finally woke me up to the extraordinary simplicity of the situation: if you get rejected, the idea is NOT good enough.  There's nothing to feel hardly-done-by about.  No unfairness.  
I know that most people understand that - I think Arthur certainly does - and it's not that which worries me.  It's the little one-liners that are like a bitter sting in the end of a lot of rejectees' posts.  They write two sensible paragraphs about being frustrated but being determined to carry-on, then say (for example) "Or, hey, I could always join the secret writers' club!".  They don't mean it seriously, but they *want* to believe it, and it's an INCREDIBLY dangerous mindset.

And then we start hearing complaints about having to do fanzines and actually work *hard* for something, and it just makes me a bit sad, I guess.  

That make more sense?

Hey, didn't mean to offend, I just can't stand this whole "it's not fair!" thing.

I don't want to go urinating on anyone from atop the moral highground, and I certainly don't want to go getting involved in arguments, but something which has been going-around a LOT recently is this sense of conspiracy or unfairness amongst wannabes.  The whole I-wannabe-a-droid community is becoming permeated by the idea that rejections have nothing to do with the quality (or lack thereof) of a submission, as much as they have to do with the name of submitter or the colour of the envelope or the weather or whatever.  I don't mean to get personal or nasty, but you've been as guilty of this as anyone else Arthur, and I just think it's a really dangerous mindset to be in.  Every time someone new turns-up with the story of their first rejection, what people *should* be saying is "Well, take the advice on the letter and try again."  What they *shouldn't* be saying is "Oh, well, you know... they never really give us wannabes enough attention anyway, and it's all because we haven't joined the secret writer's club and blah blah".  That way lies madness and Scojoism - and I suspect you'd be the first person to avoid that.  ;)

Anyway.  Didn't mean to be fractious.  No offence meant.

...so you're suggesting the only reason Zarjaz is a success is because Andrew has good connections?  Nope, don't agree at all.  He's gone out of his way to approach people, advertise for talent, organise interviews and so-forth and generally do a bloody good job as an editor.  In this industry 'contacts' aren't the same as in the movie biz: anyone can approach a professional working for comics and request an interview or a contribution without being beaten-up by a bevvie of bodyguards.  'Contacts' is just another way of saying 'people I could be bothered to approach'.

As for the usefulness of fanzines, I think it's wrong to look upon it as a business venture.  When you have your finished piece of fan fiction, there are only a handful of printed copies that turn a 'bit of expensive fun' into an investment: the ones you send to editors.  You can send as many Future Shock ideas as you want and they'll all get read sooner-or-later, but there's nothing so powerful as an editor actually *seeing* an example of your work.  I have absolutely no doubt that Tharg has digested Zarjaz with considerably more enthusiasm than is felt during the inevitable slush-pile-trawl, and now every time Andrew or Duncan or Nigel send-in idea submissions, the editor can at least be reminded of the fact that they've published work before.  

Don't mean to rant, but there's far too much of this assumption that people are *owed* something by editors.  With the Internet around these days there's this sort of all-encompassing impression that, oh, if I chuck some ideas or artwork onto the WWW Tharg has a *duty* to see them and then respond.  Bullshit.  The BEST way of getting anywhere in this - or any - industry is to get out there and be pro-active.

"You could still argue that getting stuff in the sister Mag is due to your influence as Editor of 2000AD, but, waaagh, who cares, I agree about the Tharg stories too. "

Ah, (he said, placing the anally-retentive capstone upon the tomb of dullness) but it's *also* true that Tharggle wrote Lenny Zero part 1 as a way of filling a gap in the Meg and saving enough money to commission Frank Miller to draw the anniversary front cover....   The results of which are, of course, history...

Andy Diggle rather famously promised he'd never take paid work as a writer for 2000AD whilst editor, presumably because of the volume of dross the writer/editors have created in the past.

He wrote Lenny Zero for the Megazine, so that doesn't really count (plus the first part, AFAIK, went unpaid) and the Tharg story in Prog 2000 which is basically part of the editorial duties anyway.

Righto....

Figured I'd reply to this little lot, more to thank everyone for their comments and honesty than anything else.  I'm not going to stand on a soapbox and tell everyone exactly why it is that 'Bec and Kawl' is the best thing since sliced bread (taking notes, Scojo?) but hopefully you'll allow a starting-out hack the liberty to ramble a bit.  I'm going to display startling honesty in every bit of this in the hopes that the discussion which I hope will follow might provide some solutions to the difficulties I will doubtless encounter in future, so:


Bec&Kawl:
The seed of the idea came from Tharg himself, which was essentially in response to the idea that pop-culture is becoming something of a free-fer-all with regard to comedy and comment.  2000AD's readership has 'elements-of-the-unreal' expectations, however, and if we'd just comic-ised 'Spaced', say, it wouldn't have gone down well at all, so after some discussion we settled upon 'occult' rather than sci-fi to spice it up a bit.  Coming from an art-college background myself it seemed high-time to have a bit of a crack at the wa-... people that surround me everyday.  So, there's point 1 on my list of defences: Bec and Kawl are *supposed* to be annoying bastards.  The idea was to make them flawed (Kawl's an irritating bugger who quotes movies every other sentence and Beccy's a pretentious goth with a complete lack of morality) but at the same time ever so slightly likeable.  It's been suggested by certain people that all the movie quotes are included because Si Spurrier thinks it's funny to drop references into conversations.  I don't.  It pisses me off something ROTTEN and there really *are* people who do it.  The sort of gimp who has a Monty Python quote for every situation and won't stop doing fucking South Park impressions.  Rrrrr.   Aaanyway....  

Point 2 is this: When referencing pop-culture, the best way of making it funny is to make it subtle.  If you're referencing film, the best way to make it subtle is to employ filmic techniques and alter them slightly.  Using the example of 'Spaced', you can get away with referencing filmic situations because you're using a filmic medium: it's all down to progressions of shots, camera actions, positioning of characters, tones-of-voice, etc.  In comics, the liberty to do these things simply isn't there (at least, not quickly).  For example - say I want to reference the infamous 'Shower Scene' from 'Psycho'.  If I'm doing-so using a video camera I'm sorted - there are about, what, 12 quick-cut shots crammed into a thirty-second sequence?  But in a comic the same visual 'gag' takes-up two pages.  Big no-no.

So I thought long and hard about it and realised this:  In a static medium like a comic, the only *visual* references that don't require enormous amounts of space are ones that are ingrained upon the film-audience's memory as *static* images:  ET crossing the moon, Arnie sinking into molten steel with his thumb raised, that sort of thing.  Fine, but few-and-far between.

So what are you left with?  Dialogue.  Buuut, again, there are a plethora of conditions which a comic simply can't hope to reproduce - tone of voice, speed of delivery, volume, etc.  When it comes right down to it, unless you have a great deal of space to play with, any film reference used in a comic-book medium is going to stick-out like a sore thumb.  Which is a bit of a problem when subtlty is the name of the game...

So my solution was, as I've said, to turn Kawl into the sort of irritating fucker who quotes movies every five seconds (that way it doesn't matter that the references stick-out like sore thumbs and their inevitable unsubtlty becomes something of a feature).  Whether it worked or not is something everyone appears to disagree on: I'm gratified in that Bec and Kawl appears to be a 'love or hate' type gig rather than just a middle-of-the-road damp squib, if nothing else. ;)

So that's my slightly shonky defence: fulfilling a quota of dynamic references in a non-dynamic media is bloody difficult.  ;)

Now, to the future...

I can think of two solutions to the problem, and I'd love any suggestions people can think of.  The solutions are as follows:

1) Use non-dynamic media to reference-source.  Books.  Magazines.  Posters. Cultural images.  Etc.   Thus-far the two 'pilot episodes' of Bec and Kawl have referenced all these things and, I think, did-so with rather more success than some of the film quotes.  The problem is that, like it or not, most people associate popular culture with things they've seen on the TV or movie-screen.  Turning Bec and Kawl into a literature-student's wankrag is tempting but would not, I suspect, go-down very well with the majority of readers...

2) Use *situation* references rather than single 'momentary' ones.  Base an entire story, say, around your characters turning-up at a dodgy motel owned by a schizo loon, rather than trying to cram 10 sore-thumb references into every story.  This technique would probably work, but at the expense of original storylines.  I really don't think that what people want to read is a series of protracted movie-spoofs...

The questions, then, become these:  

- Can Bec and Kawl, the series, survive without film quotes?
- Are non-filmic references enough to sustain a series which has pop-culture at its core?
- Are situation-references preferable to 'single panel' ones?
Aaaand any other market-research type stuff you feel might be handy.

On a personal note, writing 'serious' stories comes a lot easier to me than writing deliberately light-hearted ones, but I also think the world sometimes needs a bit of non-earth-shattering fun, so hopefully Bec and Kawl can satisfy a niche.  Whether you agree or not, or whether you think the series-concept will sink-or-swim depending upon this thorny 'pop-culture references' issue: I'd love to know.  I have plenty of ideas for B&K stories, but it suddenly occurred to me that we, as writers, are often strangely reluctant to ask the readers exactly what it is that they *want*.  So this is your chance to tell me, one way or another.  Cheers.

Why has nobody asked how much they COST yet?

He's Mr Rennie if you're Mr Finley-Day.  That would explain everything.

"As for the tune being king, did anyone hear machine heads cover of message in a bottle..? It suckeroonied."



I think it's pretty cool, actually...  Certainly not Machinehead's best number, but it kicks the living shite out of the Police version.

Although I do agree that the 'metalised pop=great' theory isn't true.  Anybody who's heard 'Sugarcoma' doing a cover of Britney's 'You drive me crazy' will appreciate just how apallingly dreadful Nu-metal can be and, frequently, is.  Watching a bunch of puppy-fat suited 13 year old girls trying to shout angrily in voices far deeper than any woman should be able to generate does NOT good rock make.

I had a crack at writing a Future Shock like that, once.  I started with a crazy character and for four pages took him on a rollercoaster ride of DENSE plot-changes and new scenarios and far too many plot-threads to all be drawn-together by the end, then on page five, just when everyone's wondering how in the hell everything will come-together for the big inevitable twist, he gets hit by a car crossing the road.  I *love* that sort of 'shit happens' story, but it doesn't really fit with the whole F.S formula thing, unfortunately.

I maintain that if Dredd has to die, it should be in an utterly unspectacular fashion: shot in the back by some zooked-out futsie, falling off his bike during a Weather-control FUBAR, something like that.  But it won't happen, thank grud.  The old man will be around for a looong time to come, I suspect.

-First one ever, with the demon stealing the guy's spirit using the ole' sneaky wordplay twist.

umm...

-I vaguely recall one (possibly painted by Si Davis) about a queen buried in a tomb in the desert, or something, which I slightly enjoyed.

ummm.....[struggling here]....

Nnnope.  Think that's it.  I'm sure there were others that I wasn't quite so down on as most, but my inability to remember tells me they can't have been *that* great.

Anyone who went to Dreddcon:1 (or was it 2?...  I can't remember) will recallAndy Diggle mentioned 2000AD was making serious inroads into starting a TV series based around Tharg's future-shocks, using a different director each week.  Simon Pegg's name was mentioned, as was Terry Gilliam's, albeit in a 'dream scenario' sort of way.

I have absolutely no idea what happened to this little project, but I'd guess it seems to have gone the way of the frog and croaked.

For the record, I still think Tales of Telguuth - with an extraordinarily tiny number of exceptions - is absolutely inexcusable wank.