M. Zachary Sherman's Blog

This may get me in trouble (and it’s long), but I don’t care.

Hey Hollywood? PLEASE STOP changing preexisting characters and stories to fit new, politically correct and liberalized agendas– PLEASE! It doesn’t work. You’re ruining popular culture to fit the narrative of what you think is going to make you money. And it’s been proven time and time again to FAIL. Yet you keep doing it.

The majority of the people who ingest these types of materials feverishly, the ones who actually pay you on a constant basis to read/watch these characters and keep you alive financially? They don’t want to see it. And not because they’re sexist or racist, but because they LOVE the character they follow for the reasons that they are who they are!

Marvel is struggling in the publishing arena for a multitude of reasons, but I have to tell you, the majority of readers who BUY comics do not want to read Female Thor, Chinese Hulk, or Female 16-year old African-American Iron Man.

**NOW LET ME BE CLEAR**

That is NOT TO SAY these types of characters, archetypes and stories can’t work or stand on their own, but they will FAIL when you take beloved characters that have been around for over 60 years (in some cases) and alter them SO MUCH they no longer even resemble the essence of what made the character so entertaining and popular to begin with.

Those examples above ARE NOT their namesakes. That is they are NOT Thor, Bruce Banner, or Tony Stark. You want an African American super smart teenager who can make all sorts of cool tech? AWESOME! I’m down to read that, really! If it’s good. But if you KILL TONY STARK and this is what comes next, then NO because she’s NOT Iron Man. Tony Stark is IRON MAN.

Sure, take risks with a character, change them, alter them, but the second Bruce Wayne isn’t Batman? He’s NOT Batman anymore. It’s a guy in a Batman costume. Sorry, Dick, I love you and Nightwing is an amazing character (not as a spy, sorry guys I just couldn’t get into that one), but you aren’t Batman and Damon in NOT Robin.

And reboots? In general they do not work. Robocop was a travesty. The Mummy (a reboot of a reboot, btw) with Tom Cruise was so bad it KILLED the new Universal Dark franchise before Russell Crowe could make enough to eat more burgers. Ghostbusters was a complete miss (nothing to do with gender, btw, it was just BAD), Total Recall was useless and even Dirty Dancing had a remake/reboot and OMG I couldn’t even get through it… Yes, I tried. So? Shut up, I liked Glee, too.

What’s amazing is that work, freelance, writing, designing and all the other things I do are keeping me so busy, I forgot I even had a website. FB and social media have become the new blogposts and where to share the current updates on new and exciting projects. But I have to remember this is still my best outlet for my crazy ramblings!

The graphic novel “Executive Outcomes,” based on the plight of the Sierra Leoneans during their struggle to survive a genocide by rebel warlords of Africa. With only 150 men, a private military company stopped over 200,000 people from being slaughtered.  This is their story. CLICK HERE to preorder from Amazon now!

Some of you out there who follow my tumultuous career know that I love military comics. Not just my own (natch!), but other ones as well. GI JOE, for one, and I have always admired the art on the relaunch from IDW back in 2000-whatever. Robert Atkins is not just an amazing artist, but he’s a fantastic guy. I met him at he SDCC where he was introduced as the new series’ artist. Man, I was so jealous of Chuck Dixon then, not just because he’d snagged my dream job, but he was getting an A-Team of people to support him.

Well, lucky for us, Robert Atkins has stepped away from GI JOE just long enough to do a three-issue run of AA for us! He’s starting with Issue 13 and going through Issue 15, but as a special treat, he did a wrap-around cover for AA#12, which hits the virtual shelves on December 17th; this Wednesday! Special thanks and a shout-out to my Project Leader and client, Michael Barnett, for trusting me when I said we should talk to Robert about working with us. Hope you all enjoy the first of three issues.

Here’s a little insight into the arc– It’s not Mustang related, but focusing on a new character we’ve seen briefly before, Captain Carter. It’s a nice origin story with a pretty good payoff at the end. i think you’ll all dig it once we get through the first 9 pages and the action starts, but hey– gotta have a character build up, right?

Check out the motion comic, new on the iPad!!!

http://bit.ly/1oqeCqn

I have a panel with IDW: “Hidden Treasures,” Friday, 4/18/14, 5:30p.m. – 6:30p.m., Room: 213

–and will be signing at the IDW booth–

Signing #1: Friday 3:30pm – 4:30pm

Signing #2 Saturday 11am – Noon

LOTS of freebies and giveaways this year so come and say hey!!

“Crowdfunding,” by the way, has hurt the independent market for comic creators. I have been told by some publishers, several of which I have worked with multiple times as a creator and work for hire, that my original idea, my new IP project that they really, really liked, was just a “vanity project.” Instead of paying me to do it, they told me to start a Kickstarter. “If it does well, we’ll publish it for you.” I don’t need them to publish it, I can self publish, really, I have an agent that can try and sell it and I have a manager who will promote it. What I need from them is their funds to help me create a book and put it out into the marketplace. That takes money, money they’re no longer willing to put into independent projects unless you’re the writer of a TV show or long-running novel series.

So now, instead of pitching an idea to a comic company and working with them to make a book they’d want to publish, I have to beg and borrow to create something they may just pass on at the end of the day anyway.

If they’re not willing to put and “skin” into the game for the project, then why would they want to help you develop some kind of synonymous relationship to begin with? Their money and access to their team of editors is supposed to be one of the draws of working with a good company, nut just them printing the book and distributing it. Yes, printing and distribution costs money, but this is stupid. If they believe in something, something they really want to publish, why not assume some of that risk? The RISK is what prompts them into doing their jobs: molding the concept, editing it to be what they as a company want to sell, marketing it to the masses, selling it to the stores, and promoting the book to the people.

Without that, you’ll never get the main-stream success you need to survive more than a six-issue mini or OGN. It’s sad, really. It seemed like a good idea at the start for inverters and creators alike, but now that companies see it as a way to get out of paying any up-front costs to creators and artists, it’s become a quickly tightening noose around newcomers and old-times collectively.

Though many artists need to “get their stuff out there,” I would suggest never working for zero. And by that I don’t mean just money, but I mean anything. “Exposure” is a legitimate concern for many young artists who can’t get their work in front of publishers (and not just the big two), but getting nothing in return for the hours of dedication and hard work it takes to make a comic is pointless and just rude. Especially when the owner of the property has a chance to make a profit.

That being said, artists who have never worked in the industry before shouldn’t expect to make the “Big Two’s” page rates for their work the first time out of the gates. To put it in comics terms, Todd McFarlane was able to up his page rate when he became famous on Spider-Man. See my point? And even some of the known guys are struggling to make real money today. If you ask any penciler what they make when they are working for companies like Dynamite, IDW, or even BOOM!, you might be shocked to see how much it breaks down to hourly (to do this, you take the page rate and divide it by how long it takes you to do a page. Most pencilers can do a page a day – 8 hours straight time, so divide the page rate by 8). This isn’t great, but it’s money. Real money. And being paid “something” is a must. So let’s talk about rights and partnerships and taking percentages over payments…

Many writers/creative people, like myself, aren’t at the penciling standards many publishers need to try and sell a new, unproven product to the public, so we have to rely on hiring an artist. The majority of Writers/Creators out there don’t have gobs of money just laying around, they’re struggling to break in and make end’s meat just like the next guy. This means they have very modest amounts of money they can pay an artist, if any. But what they do have are rights to their property.

Now, I won’t break contractual confidences here, but when I did my first OGN, “SOCOM: SEAL TEAM SEVEN,” I worked with a relative newcomer to comics named Roberto de La Torre (who is now a big cheese at Marvel – good for you Roberto!) and we negotiated a decent page rate we could both live with. It was low, but it was all I could afford and he knew my book already had a publisher attached; he needed the exposure. I’m not a millionaire, but I made a weekly paycheck, and every week I would put money aside to pay him his page rate at the end of the payment cycle. By the time the project was finished, he came out with a check and I got a kick-ass book from Image that had my words in balloons and his art in panels. ‘Nuff said. I struggled to pay him what he wanted because I wanted to keep my rights, those ownership rights.

Why?

Let’s face it; comics have become a springboard medium that comic companies completely understand isn’t about the comic sales. It’s something the industry calls “Transmedia.” Can your idea be translated into different forms of media– like a comic, game, film, TV show, toys, etc. That’s all they really care about because that’s where they make the most money. Telling a good story? Welllll, sometimes, yes, they care, but the real money is in the ancillary products they can make nowadays. And those rights aren’t something to scoff at as an artist partnering up with a writer/creator that doesn’t have a lot of seed money. Every time you see a comic book movie or TV show or game, the creator of that property is being paid (not with Marvel and DC, again – those characters are owned by corporations and not individuals). Those rights ARE worth money.

Work for free? NO. Writer/Creator can’t afford to pay you, then get payment another way. Hell, I paid a guy’s phone bill for three months once so he would work with me. Sometimes you hit the jackpot with a project and it’ll sell to the right people for a lot of money but most times it won’t. Just be happy with the end product, your book, and don’t ever work for “free.”

EDIT: This came to light today–

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/18/showbiz...

I rest my case.

Happy Holidays to all of you and yours this amazing winter season. And thank all of you for the continued support!

Happy Holidays!

As I get older, I find myself reflecting more on the past, my strengths and weaknesses and how to better myself. No, I’m not 100, I’m 40 but that’s a long time to be on this planet in anyone’s book, especially with all the stuff I’ve seen and done. I just watched the trailer to “Grudge Match” and I wanted to throw a very specific “thank you” out there to Sylvester Stallone for doing the one thing Hollywood couldn’t do for years: Make the general public remember why we loved these guys in the first place and proving once and for all we cannot just dump older folks to the side.

Ask anyone who Humphrey Bogart was. Or Errol Flynn and you’re gonna get blank stares. They were the shining stars of their day, but as they aged, Hollywood thew them aside for the younger and shiny newbies. We do it today, certainly. But there are those who fight back and prove that agism is a bunch of shit. I almost shit when I heard girls today think Brad Pitt is old. Ungh.

When I joined the USMC after 9/11 I was wold I was too old to defend my country. I was 28. I told the Gunny to kiss my ass and went around the rules, pushing through waivers and meeting with Colonels to prove to them I was worthy of being a Marine. Now, that’s an extreme, but it fits.

We need to remember older generations built us, made us who we are as a country, and respect them. We as younger people generally fear old people because we can’t imagine ever being them. Well, guess what? Unless you OD, get shot, hit by a truck or end up like Wall-E people, you’re gonna. They have a lot to offer and we should never forget their accomplishments. Especially people like Stallone, De Niro, Pacino, Walken, Keitel and the rest of the Hollywood heroes.

Thanks, Sly. You’re one of a kind and I, for one, never counted you out. An artist to the last, you’ve had an amazing career that’s taken chances, seen its ups and downs and I’m happy to have you back.