D.J. Coffman - Sequential Artist, Thinker

Just getting around to the net today. Was up most of the night with my dog who was scared shitless over the storm we had. It was pretty loud, maybe the loudest thunder and lightning I’ve ever heard in recent memory. Sounded like bombs going off in my yard. Oddly though, I found the sound soothing and could have just slept through it. My kids did. The dog didn’t… so…. late start.

I’ve been the topic of conversation between my friend Al Nickerson and Dave Sim over creator rights issues, something both are passionate about and write about extensively. Dave refers to me as “The DJ Coffmans of the world”, in regard to just selling my work away to companies, or as if to infer that that’s all I have an interest in doing. I know he meant it generally and I don’t take offense to that, I think the world knows that Dave Sim is an opinionated fellow. I’ve been an admirer of his work for some time, and sometimes I scratch my head when I hear some of the quotes about mysogeny or religious views… but other times he’s brilliant. He did the self publishing world a great service in publishing his guide to self publishing in the back of Cerebus comics way back… when? Jesus, I’m getting old? Nah! Anyways, I wanted to clear something up about my view on “creator rights”, because I’m surely not against it at all.

Creator rights to me, use to be about, well OWNING your work, complete control. But there’s more to it than that as well. A code of ethics, the ways creators should be paid, and how creators should also be professional towards their publishers, back and forth. Most of which, I’ve broken into a million pieces by just telling the truth or my honest opinion. All many people know of me is Hero By Night, and the fact I sold it away, but I did so willingly because well, I wanted to make money. Some people still argue that when you do that, it’s a one time thing and you’re done, and years from now they’ll make zillions and you get nothing . Some cases that’s true in the past, but it’s not the case with my deal, and that’s why I went toe to toe with so many people criticizing my deal. Even though Platinum probably HATES me now, i’m still connected to Hero By Night and I’ll benefit from anything they do with it in the future. Sure, maybe they’ll shelve it for good, but I reckon if the chance to do anything in tv/film came along, they’d jump at it because, well, it’s business and they’d want to recoup some of their investment on it, and turn a profit. And when or if they do anything with it, I get a cut. That’s why I always felt like this was a MUCH better deal than Jack Kirby or other godfathers of comics got. They got NOTHING but headaches and heartbreaks. So at least it’s SOMETHING.. it’s one thing that’s out there somewhere, for better or worse.

And to any of my detractors who despise me, or ramble on about how bad it was for me to do, I’ve not ignored the things you’ve said. It’s actually got my brain itching to do full on creator owned stuff again, and you’re partly right. And luckily, I’m not a one trick pony, and I have plenty of concepts I’d like to explore that I’m being way more cautious with in the future. Even though this ended rough, it was a good experience for me, I learned a lot.  For now, unless it’s drawing other peoples characters for like Marvel or DC or some other writer’s project, I’m pretty much leaving Work-For-Hire alone. I won’t work work for hire on things I created and that other people own.  I don’t regret doing it, I just won’t do it again any time soon.

So, Mr. Sim doesn’t have to worry about the “DJ Coffmans” of the world making his job harder, because I think they might actually make it easier… and well, to my knowledge, there’s only ONE me. And I’ll be off somewhere creating fun comics.

Well I looked over the new Wowio contract with Platinum’s new items listed in the contract amendments and I’m going to have to pass on it, here’s why.

There will be new multiple ways for you to monetize your content, let’s take a look at the actual text and I’ll give you my own personal beefs with it.

1.      AMENDMENTS TO AGREEMENT.  The terms and provisions of the Agreement are hereby amended as follows:

1.1    EXPANSION OF GRANT OF RIGHTS.  In addition to the grant of rights by Publisher under the Agreement, Publisher hereby grants and conveys to WOWIO the following rights in and to the Content:

The right to display page images derived from Content for free in a web browser with interactive display advertising (“PREVIEW”).

* BOOM. Right off the top you’re essentially giving them the right to use the content inside your ebooks as pretty much “webcomics” that they’ll monetize by selling advertising and boost their pageviews. They go on to say they’ll give you 20% of any advertising made, more on that in a bit…

Publisher shall have the option through the Publisher account interface to make “Ebooks” eligible for sale and to set a sale price (“ECOMMERCE OPTION”). If Publisher elects to activate the Ecommerce Option, Publisher hereby grants Company the right to sell Ebooks without embedded advertising. The default setting for this option is “inactive”.  For purposes of the Agreement “Ebooks” shall mean self-contained electronic files, one format of which shall be Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format.

* The thing that made Wowio work in the first place was free downloads. If I’m going to sell PDFs to my fans I can do that myself direct over my own website. Sure there will be creators and publishers who don’t know how to do this, and this will seem like an easy service to use, but you’ll be giving up HALF of your sales to them. 50/50 just seems ridiculous to me, and in my own personal opinion there is no market for selling these ebooks, other people have tried and failed miserably.

Publisher shall have the option through the Publisher account interface to make Ebooks eligible for free distribution with embedded advertising when sponsors are available (“SPONSORSHIP OPTION”). If Publisher elects to activate the Sponsorship Option, Publisher hereby grants Company the right to distribute Ebooks for free with embedded advertising. The default setting for this option is “active”.

*”When” Sponsors are available? What happens when sponsors aren’t available? That seems really vague. Who’s going to be in charge of getting sponsors now? Platinum?!? UGH.

1.3    ROYALTIES.  Schedule A to the Agreement is hereby deleted in its entirety, and the following shall constitute the Royalties payable to Publisher under the Agreement:

For revenues derived from Preview, Publisher shall receive 20% percent of the quarterly gross advertisement revenue generated by interactive display advertising on pages that contain page images from Publisher’s Content.

* This was what set off alarm bells in my head initially. So, they’ll be using your content to generate pageviews that you have no way of accessing, nor do you know how much advertisers are paying, so you have to just trust whatever they say you made off of pageviews without any system of checks and balances mentioned. In light of Platinum Studios telling me that Hero By Night only generated 800 bucks in ad revenue for a webcomic that has been online since October 2006 and consistantly had the HIGHEST pageviews on all of Drunk Duck… I don’t have faith that they can either A. figure out real well paying advertisers, or B. tell the truth about how much they actually made off of web advertising revenue. You might find yourself in the same position of asking… wait, we had all these pageviews and we only made 50 bucks this quarter? — and they’ll say something like, Well, that was the going CPM…  better luck next time. I also don’t think it’s an accident that they’re only willing to cut YOU in on 20% of their web revenue… but hey, why wouldn’t they cut you in on 50% of that? I mean, they want 50% of YOUR ebook. That just doesn’t seem well thought out at all, and it smells bad to me.

For revenues derived from Ecommerce Option, Publisher shall receive 50% percent of the quarterly gross revenue generated by sales of Ebooks of the Publisher’s Content.
For revenues derived from Sponsorship Option, Publisher shall receive (i) 50 cents ($0.50 USD) per download for eTexts of less than 100 pages; and (ii) One dollar ($1.00 USD) per download for eTexts of 100 pages and above.
All Royalties shall be paid to Publisher on a quarterly basis, within 45 days following the end of each calendar quarter.

* Couple things here... again, the thought of splitting 50/50 profits on an ebook sale with anyone is ridiculous to me. And the part about when you’re SUPPOSED to be paid, turns my stomach a little in the light of the situation I was in with Platinum. I’m guessing everything will go smoothly during the “transition” period when the old Wowio people are still managing things.. but when the keys are handed over to Platinum, I’ve got a BADDDddddddd feeling about people being paid on time. That’s not an assumption, that’s a proven fact, regardless of the articles written about creators owed, printer representives telling me they were owed and COMIC BOOK NEWS sites telling me they were owed money… and the Drunk Duck kids over there, there was a bunch of “mobile wallpaper” people never paid. I have a really good friend who had his wallpapers up through their service before, and when he asked, he was told that “none sold” but he knew better because his own family had boughten them from the site!!!! — Anyways, THAT’S who will be running this shindig now. That’s who owns them. You have been warned.

To end things off… even if I wanted to stay on under Wowio with my other ebooks I had there… I got a follow up email asking to FAX the form in signed ASAP so they could get it back to me. I think someone in management is out of touch, because not that many comic creators have fax machines these days. It almost sounded to me like if there was a contest and you needed to send in videos, they’d ask for VHS. That’s neither here nor there. I mean… you’d think Wowio would say, get us a signed PDF file… right? Maybe they don’t know how to sign it and send it back? Who knows….

Anyways, that’s why I’m bailing. Had it not been for Platinum being involved and buying them out, maybe I’d be able to trust the system a little bit more. I’d have more faith in Wowio too if they hadn’t actually, well, basically if you look at it, they PAID Platinum to buy them out with shares. That doesn’t sound like a company that was doing very well for itself, and they must not have had many more offers if they settled with Platinum, a company in the midst of a bunch of public money trouble. That’s not inside information, that’s public information that anyone can look up at the SEC.gov site.

Good luck to everyone.

Hey, the HULK cover I did for Marvel and Hero INitiative is up, go bid on it and check it out!

HULK 100 cover by D.J. Coffman

Well my wife has gone to the beach with her Dad and Grandmother and Stepmother, and I’m holding down the fort at home with the kids for a week here.  They’ve had it pretty tough this year with the death of their grandfather on that side of the family, so hopefully some time away to clear their minds and just “get out” and see other things will help them all cope in different ways. My wife especially, who lost both her grandmother on one side of the family, and her grandfather on the other this spring. I’ve spent the past couple years going to all kinds of places and cities and such and leaving her with the kids, so it’s only fair when this trip was offered to her, pretty much all expenses paid, I wanted her to take it for her.

Plus, now I’m thinking this could be an AWESOME brownie point to try to go to Dublin Ireland in September with the Flobots to catch them on their European tour! muhahahahaah.. (she’d kill me) - I so would want to go to Ireland though and look up old family haunts there.

Odd that the very night she left, our youngest cat decided to go on a SPRAY fest of some kind… I was up until 2am cleaning things and searching for where he pissed, like a damn hound dog sniffing around. Meanwhile, my actual hound dog was of no help at all, just snoring and farting over in a corner. THANKS, DOG! — I got so peeved, I just put the cat out on the porch with food and water. He’s pretty much afraid to leave the general area of the porch so I didn’t reckon he’d run away. I tried getitng a hold of the vet to see if we could get him in before next monday for fixing, but I was told that he needs shots first and then you have to wait two more weeks before declaw and neutering. so… UGH…. I could just leave him outside, I felt too bad, so thanks to BOB for the idea of using the big dog crate we had as a little makeshift JAIL for the cat’s ass in the meantime. Hooked him up with litter and food and water, and it’s a MUCH bigger cage than what he’d get at the pound…. and much better than finding him as roadkill in front of my house too. Bob suggests I joke with my wife and tell her the opposite…. that I came home today and the cat was smashed all over the road and looks like he was torn apart by Apaches…. I meant helicopters, but Bob said it was funnier if I meant angry Apache Indians. I’m going to tell my wife that i pulled in with the kids to find the slaughterfest all over the road, and that the kids were crying and howling… then I’ll spring it on her. I don’t want to ruin her whole trip thinking there’s a dead cat painting our roadway. So for now… my basement is… CAT PRISON!

The Will Draw Anything Day was going good yesterday. I put a good dent in the orders, but then the Dr. Horrible pic I did ended up as a link on Whedonesque.com and a bunch more orders came in and erased the progress I made. I’m not complaining though, the more the merrier, I just hope people are cool with waiting during these busy periods. Hey, it’s only 2 bucks. I actually have some people paying me more than 2 bucks, saying they feel bad for only paying 2 bucks, which I appreciate, but it’s no necessary. Those Whedon fans are pretty nice people. I also got a job offer from a TV type blog to do something there, but I’ll have to think about it because I’m pretty busy right now with the FLO right now and other things.

I’ve already noticed that I’m WAY more comfortable doing penciling directly on the Cintiq now, and that’s going to save me time in the future here. I use to do pencils on paper and then scan, and then do inking and coloring on the screen– but it was just a matter of being faster and more comfortable with the tools on paper.  I’m working on the FIRST flobot installment done completely on the screen today, and should be posting that later tonight at Flobots.net, and then I’ll be getting back to more Will Draws as well. If it weren’t for the cat problem late last night, I probably would have been in the #90s by morning, but such is life!

Oh, today is also the first day of football practice for the kids too. Will have that all week to contend with in the evening, but it’s fun to get out and watch them play and have fun. So much of my working life has revolved around the net for the past 8 years… sometimes I’m tempted to just pull the plug and take a year off of online blogging and networking or posting in forums and that… just sort of do the basic things.. update the art, do my work and just go radio silent for a year. No drama, no headlines, no opinions from me… just good comics. I don’t know if I could ever “unplug” now though… the system…. has me….

It’s Sunday. A day of rest? HELLZ NO! It’s time to DRAW ANYTHING.

I’m going to try to get a WHOLE bunch of these done all day today and my goal is to get caught up. Right now there’s about 50 or so sitting in the waiting list… LET’S DO THEM!

Weekend update…

First… I just want to say thanks to a few online friends here. You know who you are, and there have been a bunch of you, Al, Scott, Glenn, Mark, Dan and more… You’re all right, I’ve been a crybaby a bit too much about my problems, and I need to move forward. I guess this just takes awhile to really SINK in under the anger and frustration, but I do feel it all melting away. I want to thank all of you for caring and being supportive and telling me the truth from the heart, and not from some personal agenda or something. It means a lot to me guys.

For a few weeks, my computer has been making a pretty rough sound, I figured it was a fan of some kind in there, but it was always really hard to get down and unplug everything and get it out of the desk cabinet. That’s one of my biggest pet peeves I think computer wise. First thing this morning I rearranged the desktop and brought the CPU back up top, just to keep it from getting all dusty. Still the sound would come and go and I couldn’t pinpoint which fan it was until now… when I was adjusting the CPU around on the desk i bumped the video wire from my Cintiq and heard the noise come on which made me immediately crack open the case to identify the vibration… it was the little video card fan rubbing on the edge of the chip under it. Annoying! So I kind of adjusted it for now I guess. Probably going to have to get a new video card at some point, but I was releaved to find out it was only THAT and not something major.

Work wise I’ve been focusing like a laserbeam on stuff for the Flobots, some new shirt designs which should be on their way to the printer very soon (like maybe today! the flobots don’t mess around!) — I can’t wait to see them out there, and as a fan, I want these shirts too! I need to come up with a more cute one for the female audience as well, that’s probably next on my agenda this week. So, anyways, that’s all good. I’ve officially signed on as their web assistant, handling a whole bunch of things for them, website design, updating, etc and I’m doing some more work with the non-profit side too soon. Lots, LOTS going on. That’s an understatement! Working with them makes me feel really good and gets me out of the mental funk I’d been in. The first chapter of the Flobots comic will wrap this coming week as well… then we’re taking it to whole other places and levels. So, if you’re looking for new comic stuff by me, check http://flobots.net

Will Draws: Thanks in part to the writeup and attention from Rich Johnston’s article I have a crap-ton of Will Draw Anythings to do. I plan on probably doing some today in a big batch, and then devoting the whole day tomorrow to doing them and getting semi-caught up. For one, they’re fun and keeping me sharp. Two, it’s weird the little job offers that are springing up from doing these. One thing that does annoy me are the people questioning the cost being too low, or some idiots out there assuming I’m desperate for money and that’s why I’m doing it… but wow, do the math!? Why would I draw 100 images only to make 50 bucks!?? It’s not really about the money at all. But yeah, for those waiting… I’m gonna get to your drawnings ASAP! Wasn’t expecting a rush of them like that… I’m gonna get to draw a whole bunch of variety of comic characters though, ones I’d never ever think to draw, like Multiple Man in a chorus line? Some Dr. Horrible stuff, etc… it’s a lot of fun, because… well, I LOVE to draw. — For the past couple years, I’ve barely had time to sketch for fun, and every time my pencil was hitting the paper it was for a specific project or deadline, so this is a breathe of fresh air. Fresh, crazy air.

New Toy: Snagged up a FLIP video camera. They’re tiny, and take 60 minutes of good video. Trevor Mueller of ASSHOLE, showed me an Ultra Series version when I was in NY, and it was pretty nifty. This MINO version is smaller than my iphone and charges with a built in battery.

Dr. Horrible: Is horribly AWESOME. Just watched Act 3… I want more of this! I reckon they won’t make more, but WOW, if they did, it would be something I’d pay for. I had already slapped down my 3.99 for the Itunes feed after watching part one. I’m not even a HUGE Joss Whedon fan or anything like that, I just like it because it’s so clever to me in some way. It would be FRAKKING AWESOME to get to draw a Dr. Horrible Webcomic or something. Expect fan art! One of my favorite things… highlight for spoiler: BAD HORSE is an actual fucking HORSE! hahahahah!Yeah… too awesome.

Dark Knight the movie: Holy. Shit. I don’t know if I can even classify this as a “super hero” movie. It is just one GREAT piece of film. You’ll hear all about it elsewhere, but two things from me here…. #1, from the first scene Heath Ledger OWNS the joker role and brings it to a whole other level of pschiotic greatness. When he walked in the scene I thought… “awh man, there’s Heath Ledger…” — and as soon as the head hits the pencil, for the rest of the movie I forgot it was Heath Ledger at all, until the VERY end when Bob brought it up to me and turned to say…. “Goddamn it man, that guy is a GREAT actor, there will never be anymore of him as the joker…” — and that just brought me WAY down. I seriously forgot it was Heath Ledger at all. — #2, I think Bob summed it up with the feeling when we walked out… ever been in a car accident or in the middle of danger and you’re now safe and happy to be alive? THAT was the feeling walking out of there. That was like being in the middle of several car crashes in a good way. — Oscar to Ledger because he fucking deserves it. Would that be the first real actor oscar to a comic book movie??? I’ve never seen an IMAX movie, nor do I know where an imax theater is around here, but goddamn it I want to go see this in IMAX now for sure.

Thats it for me… lots of drawing to attend to…

Batman Day! Going to see the 5oclock I guess. Can’t wait.

Lots of stuff going on behind the scenes, none of it I can really talk about right now, but I’m itching to show some new stuff off as soon as I can.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about certain negative situations that have been going on, and pretty much decided to ignore them all and move on. There are times where waves of anger come over me when I think about some of the bullshit being said out there online. The first instinct is to jump to my defense, or just keep telling the truth when asked questions, but I see that’s not a two way street. There are going to be idiots who spin things, and everyone seems to flock to a drama storm. It’s entertainment to them I guess. I wish people could know the details of things I’ve turned down doing… from dickhead legal moves that would really fuck up people’s days, to REALLY crude drawing requests. (you thought skullhumping was bad??? UGH…) - My only real agenda is to draw good comics, get paid doing it (on time would be nice) and be treated with just a SMIDGE of respect. My new rule I think is to just not work with assholes. Or if I’m working with top-secret assholes, the minute I discover they’re assholes in sheeps clothing, I’m out. It really disgusts me, people who put on a show to collect a check, say all the right things to the people. Sure, they’ll tell you how awesome you are, or how long they’ve been a “fan”, or SURE they check your site out regularly and love your work (SURE.), they even listen to ALL of your podcasts and “appreciate everything you do.”– but when it boils down to it, they’re just out for their own bottom lines. Forget about “creators rights” and all that, it just boils down to common decency and respect.

Somebody… I forget who, maybe it was multiple people (which means maybe I should buy a clue?), but somebody or multiple people suggested to me… why don’t I just look out for my OWN interests. My old friend Bob always would say to me “Why are you helping these other creators? Why are you sharing all this info about making money with webcomics?” — or he’d be baffled as to if I figured out something that worked for me, I’d share it with other creator friends of mine and encourage them. Some suggested i should be charging for it, make an ebook, start a consulting business…. but I just generally want to help people I guess. When a kid comes up to me at a show with a portfolio in his hand and wants a critique, it brings me a lot of JOY, even if they’re work isn’t Marvel/DC level quality, to be able to encourage them by saying…. hey, go launch this stuff on the internet as a webcomic. You’ll be seen EVERY DAY instead of just once a year at a comic book convention where editors are going to tell you to work on your perspective and anatomy and composition and layouts…. just go build your audience online! — I didn’t have that, so it’s such an AWESOME tool to me.

And I admit, it angers me and frustrates me to feel like I’ve been crapped on royally after doing so much GOOD for someone, opening doors for them, opening minds for them. I hope that NEVER makes me leary to act differently though. I don’t want to become a jaded old prick who never shares with the world.

Now my mind seems a bit open to a different world outside of “comics”, and I guess I’m applying the same thing there too. I have that rule that I sometimes end up breaking — the “don’t be a dick.” rule. I guess it’s hard not to come off like a dick sometimes when you’re doing satire or parody drawings, and people get upset. I end up breaking my no dick rule when others are being dicks to me. I guess sometimes I’m asking for it though. Maybe I should consider a preemptive “no dick” rule now? Like if I’m doing something, I should ask, will this make me be a dick later if I’m provoked?

Nah, that would be no fun.

So, there’s there’s been this crazy beanstalk-like weed growing in the middle of some bushes in our yard. Initially it was hard to get to with the trimmer and we let it go. And it got taller, and I’d peek out to see it and always think to go out and gut it… but over time, I liked to watch it grow taller and taller…. how tall will our beanstalk get?

A beanstalk-like weed growing up in my yard.

If it gets big enough and grows up to a magic kingdom in the sky, I promise to get the giant living up there to come and smite all my enemies.

It’s very strange how i seem to have been able to get TONS more work done while a whole bunch of drama has broken out since Sunday. Sigh.

UPDATE HERE: I just received a cease and desist letter from Platinum about using the HeroBynight.com, and HeroByNight.net addresses that I’d bought and hosted for the past two years. I did have them pointing to my djcoffman.com site, after I stopped receiving payments on time, and didn’t want the money I had spent to advertise on places like Comic BOok Resources to go promoting the project that was dead in the water. I’m putting it all back the way it was now, or just putting the URLS up for transfer to them, no problem.

I was just writing up a pretty detailed and opinionated blog here, commenting on the recent Publishers Weekly Article about Platinum Studios clear and present financial troubles, and Platinum posting their part of the full interview on their new “Platinum blog” - I caught a link on the Hero By Night page quoting on there just how much money they say I’ve made in the past 20 months and how much money they SAY they put into Hero By Night…. Some of it is totally true, but I’d like to ask anyone out there that knows comics, did you ever once see an AD for Hero By Night in any other trade magazines, at shows? Anything? The only advertising they did for the Hero By Night comic book was the listing in Previews. That’s it. I saw on a balance sheet they hurriedly threw together a line that said “24,000″ for “marketing” costs, and immediately had asked what that was for??! 24k? Nobody really knew, but different people said they assumed it was for the “Free Comic Book Day” issue… which might I add would have been for Gunplay and Comic Book Challenge… so it was odd to see that listed on a sheet as an expense for Hero By Night alone, but I know companies do this all the time to really pile on the “costs”—

But man, what I could have done with 24k in marketing money. UGH… it hurts my brain a little to think about it. One time I had asked for like, 500 bucks extra to buy some ads around on some different comic sites. I was told that it wasn’t worth it to advertise on Newsarama, or Comic Book Resources. But from my own marketing and branding background, to me, I thought, well I want logo where the target audience can see it. So, I actually bucked up and started spending some of my OWN money to advertise for Hero By Night, and our website pageviews went up because of it. — That balance sheet also said something to the effect of they only made 800 bucks in Ad money from the site. I shook my head, flabbergasted, because i know how much money other webcomics have made, or even I had made ni the past. It occured to me, and I asked, that maybe someone was fudging numbers, or just not using the RIGHT ad networks… hell, we could have made more money than that off of well placed and desiged GOOGLE ads. — I made more off of googleads sitting on an old archive with half the traffic I was bringing in. …  I won’t even get into the convention aspect. While we DID go around to a lot of shows in the “Drunk DUck” section they bought up of Artists Alleys at Wizard world shows, there were times we had dinners that could have paid for an entire publisher booth and been taken more seriously. When I asked about San Diego Comicon, or setting up there, I got the feeling from everyone that it would just be a “huge pain in the ass.” and not worth the work. The biggest comic show in the world….. and they’re not present inside? Now, with COmic Book Challenge going on down the street the past two years, fine, I could understand that, but again… 24k in marketing?? Where? Why?

So yeah, that boggles my mind. 24k? Brian just passes me off as any creator who would complain to a publisher about not enough promotion. But the guy’s problem is, and he admitted this to me is, he just doesn’t KNOW comics. For all intents and purposes, and not a surprise to many, Platinum isn’t in the comic BOOK business.

This was another private reason I flew off the handle like I did back in late May and June. It was only in APRIL right before the Pittsburgh Comicon that Brian Altounian and Scott Rosenberg had called me on the phone, very excited, offering me a position IN the company. A big position, one that they’d be willing to move my entire family out for, relocation… I’d of been in charge of a lot of things and righting the ship on marketing, branding, and making money with their digital side of things. They figured I had been yammering in private “consulting” with them in what was wrong and HOW EASY it was to fix all these things. Many of the ideas I brought to the table became winning things for them behind the scenes. How easy it was to post a blog on your site listing what books you have comign out, offering Previews up, just very basic comic book and webcomic marketing things. I was ecstatic at this offer, and nervous as all hell. But I did believe that THIS could have been a real chance for me to get out there with boots on the ground and FIX things internally and change the perception out there…  That was a BIG life changing decision…. but I was confident I could easily do this job for ANY comic or entertainment company that was as serious as I was about the effort…

2 weeks after that, my checks stopped coming on time. I was told there was “no money” to pay anyone. When I asked what was up with our print schedule, no word… nothing. Imagine how incredibly frustrating it must have been to one day be offered some big wig job, then very shortly after, not know if you’ll be able to pay your bills on time. That was a big factor in me going public… and forget about my own disgruntledness, imagine how pissed MY WIFE was about all of this? I mean, that is some serious business there to go through. Instead, all I got was no communication with Platinum after the first Rich Johnston column came out. Nothing but the one email telling me they had changed their mind about the print and web rights because I talked.

And so now, that brings it all up to date.

I had one question for Platinum Studios though… if they accuse me of releasing inside information in my second contract, which they then indeed terminated me from, — but in their article they just published, and that employees went over to the HBN fan page and repeated just how much money they say they spent on Hero By Night, AND how much money they say they paid me in the past 20 months…. isn’t that confidential information, and doesn’t that then break their FIRST original Comic Book Challenge contract with me? I mean, I know they’re mad that I rained on their bullshit tea party, but let’s all use our brains a little here. What was the point of that? To say …. “Hey guys, DJ made money, he shouldn’t be angry.”

Yeah… seriously messed up business ethics going on out there. I use to wish they would FIX this, but I’m afraid it’s only gotten worse.