Tr!ckster at San Diego

So, after some recent positive news on a couple of fronts, I decided to commit fully to attending San Diego this year (I haven’t attended since 2008). And then I found out about Tr!ckster, and had an email exchange with the extraordinary Scott Morse, and my excitement doubled:

TR!CKSTER is a free venue, open to the public. We offer a retail space specializing in creator-owned work, a gallery, and a Symposia area. While the Symposia are ticketed events, the TR!CKSTER shop itself is open for business at no charge and will feature a fair-trade coffee station, a full bar, animation and live-action short film screenings, gallery receptions, artist signings, drawing events, DJs, and live music.

For those who haven’t been following news of Tr!ckster, I’d direct your attention to their website:

http://trickstertrickster.com/

As anyone who knows me knows, I’m a huge supporter of creator-owned comics. I’m also a huge supporter of quality work-for-hire comics. The industry needs both to survive and thrive to be all it can be. So seeing the effort that Scott and his co-conspirators have put into this event is heartening and exciting, and I’ve pledged to be involved.

Should make for a special con season.

MONSTEROLOGY is live!

The new issue of DOUBLE FEATURE COMICS (HORROR DOUBLE FEATURE) just went live. For 99 cents, snag it for your iPad or grab a pdf! Let us know what you think!

http://www.doublefeaturecomics.com/

Chandler on plot vs. the scene

From the introduction to his Trouble is My Business collection, from 1950. Raymond Chandler discusses the strengths of the hard-boiled mysteries he helped popularize (and elevate). I think this bit applies to most genre storytelling…including comics:

“The technical basis of the Black Mask type of story…was that the scene outranked the plot, in the sense that a good plot was one which made good scenes. The ideal mystery was one you would read if the end was missing. We who tried to write it had the same point of view as the film makers. When I first went to work in Hollywood a very intelligent producer told me that you couldn’t make a successful motion picture from a mystery story, because the whole point was a disclosure that took a few seconds of screen time while the audience was reaching for its hat. He was wrong, but only because he was thinking of the wrong kind of mystery.”