Messages

>>it would be cheap as well... send in your one page story for glory wages... i.e. nowt



This, or something similar, comes up every few years and usually ends up provoking a reaction from the Nerve Centre.

There was a debate about this a couple of years ago on one of the mailing lists, the idea proposed being that the Meg could run original material and not reprints and still save itself some money by using work from basically unpaid/very low-paid newbies who would just be happy to get the exposure and experience.

Andy Diggle's 100% correction reaction was as follows:

1.  If your work's good enough to be published, it's good enough to be paid for.

2.  They're there to entertain the readers, not exploit them.

3.  They'd be deliberately running cheapo work which they knew to be sub-standard (after all, if it was truly up to scratch, they'd be willing to pay a proper going rate for it) while still expecting the readers to pay full price for the comic it was appearing in.


The one-page strip idea isn't a bad idea, but no way should anyone ever do work for a professional publisher for free.  Everyone else in the comic is getting paid - why shouldn't you be.

Plus, if you show a professional publisher (or any employer, for that matter) that you're a mug willing to work for free or ultra-low wages when everyone else is getting the going rate, what compunction will they ever have to pay you any more?

- Gordon, Father of the Chapel

Toxic did have an strong effect on 2000AD and its subsequent history, although I'll subjectively leave it up to you to decide which were good and which were bad.

2000AD went all-colour just before Toxic came out, because they knew that Toxic was going to be all-colour.

Toxic was the result of a whole bunch of 2000AD elder statesmen creators' disatisfaction with Fleetway's rights system and the editorial leadership of 2000AD.  When they decamped to set up Toxic, it left a big hole in the 2000AD line-up, and opened the way for other younger 2000AD writers and artists to take up the reins.

Just think: without Toxic, we'd never have had the return of Robohunter, Dead Meat, Dry Run, Wireheads and all those Mark Millar or Sunny Steelgrave Dredds.

Just think: without Toxic, some of the real off-the-shelf crap - much of it from 2000AD elder statesmen -  that filled the comic in its latter days may well have ended up in 2000AD instead.

Toxic did open up the creators' rights issue to a certain extent, and bring creator-owned material to 2000AD fof the first time.  A little bit.  For some people.

Toxic's failure convinced everyone that another 2000AD-type UK newsstand comic was never going to be a viable option, leaving, for better or worse, 2000AD as more or less the only game in town.

>>I got a Masonic handshake at the end of an interview once... needless to say I did not get the job...

It probably didn't help if you leapt back shouting "What are you doing?  Stop tickling my palm, you sleazy perv!"

Hey, you never know when something like that might come in useful.


"Why, yes, officer, I am *that* Gordon Rennie.  So how about we exchange funny handshakes, forget about this whole 'arresting me' business and I'll just be on my way?"

I seem to live in Stirling and spend a very alarming amount of time posting to every freemason-related group under the sun on usenet.

>>You'll have to watch some of the old Whos through nostalgia goggles...

Very, very thick and heavily rose-tinted nostalgia goggles.

After staggering in from the pub on Friday night, I was drunkenly delighted to find the Brain of Morbius showing on UK Gold, and drunkenly sat down to watch it.

Oh dear me....oh deary deary me...

Ian Miller was one of the main artists who established the look and feel of GW's Warhammer worlds, way back in the days of yore.

Seminal pulp reads from the Rennie droid's equally distant past would include:

Sven Hassel

Leo Kessler (like Hassel, but with more violence, lots more sex and very little of the politicking)

Michael Moorcock's Champion Eternal stuff (tried re-reading some of these recently in the re-released collections....bloody rubbish, some of them...)

the Conan books (yes, even the Lin Carter/L. Sprague De Camp piss-poor REH pastiches)

James Herbert (of course, before graduating to Stephen King)

Karl Edward Wagner's Kane series of fantasy novels (these are still bloody great, btw)

Barrington Bailey's bonkers SF stuff

EE Doc Smith (is he even in print anymore?  He used to take up half the shelf space in bookshops' SF sections back in the 70s)

Dr Who Target books

>>Oh, yeah - the text stories.
>>
>>Think about it. Text. In a comic.


Yeah, but they pay really well...

;->

C'mon, Dan.  You might be able to fool these other guys, but....


;->

There's also a  case to be argued that one-page stories like that are definitely not something to be attempted by beginners.

Henry drew twelve (that's TWELVE) perfectly legible and understandable panels on one page, making the story flow with a great degree of  clarity.  How many other artists, especially up-and-comers, have the draughtsmanship and storytelling ability to do the same?

>How?s that?

Did I forget to mention that it's really all got to be about the Dark Judges too?


btw, I don't think having Dredd in an aerial chase vaping  skysurfers is really the way to go.

It should really all be about saving the city and taking on some major villain.   Not shooting unarmed teenagers who just out to have fun.

Some of these ideas are pretty cool, but  a game's got to have the semblance of a semi-cohesive plot, rather than being an assemblage of random incidents.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to construct a story featuring a Hotdog Run, a trip to the Undercity, a Supersurf race, a rookie patrol and an outbreak of escaped creatures at the Alien Zoo...  ;->


PS.  One of these things actually is in the Dredd vs Death game, btw.

That's exactly my feelings on the subject too.

Still, it's always entertaining watching people tying themselves into knots in trying to explain it away in terms that make sense in continuity.

Trust me, guys, the "well, it seemed like a good idea at the time, then they realised it was actually a bit crap, or didn't make much sense, or didn't fit the way they wanted the story to go, so they changed it" answer wins every time.

Speak up, mate.  We can't hear you at the back.

There's loads of Psi-Judges in the Dredd-Death novel-of-the-game, which I just finished about 3 minutes ago.

No birdies, though, but maybe the odd conflagration or two.  Would that make up for it?