Inkstuds Spotlight is done! Thank you for listening, or sharing the links around, or telling me or the creators I spoke to how much you dug what they had to say. It was a lark, it worked, and now I’m going to type too much about why and how I did it. But first, an index:

Darryl Ayo: CA | Inkstuds | Website
Jay Potts: CA | Inkstuds | Website
Jimmie Robinson: CA | Inkstuds | Website
Whit Taylor: CA | Inkstuds | Website
LeSean Thomas: CA | Inkstuds | Website
Spike Trotman: CA | Inkstuds | Website
Qiana Whitted: CA | Inkstuds | Website

I love writing about comics. More specifically, I love talking about them with other people, and writing gives me a chance to trick people into having conversations with me about comics. Writing is just a way of organizing my thoughts or interrogating what I think about a book. Now that I work in the industry, though, I understand that my words have an aspect they didn’t before: even when I’m not representing my company, people will look at it like I’m representing my company. Before, I appeared courtesy of myself. Now, I still do, but the perception may be different depending on who and where you are.

I’m still figuring out that balance. I don’t want to not-talk, but I don’t want to have people looking at me like “Well, you had no business saying this since you’re working professional #teamcomics.” I’m very careful about recommending Image books or dissing other books, because I feel like my word has some value, and I don’t ever want to trade on that for garbage reasons.

A weird part of paring down how often I’m writing about comics is that I spend a lot more time thinking about comics and why they work the way they do. Absence makes the heart grow even more curious, until finally the heart is like “chill out dude, just get over your dumb self and do something you want to obviously do.”

Robin McConnell founded and runs the Inkstuds comics podcast. At last year’s Emerald City Comicon, Robin asked me about doing some programming for Inkstuds. I thought about it, but couldn’t come up with any ideas worth doing, and then I quit my job, ComicsAlliance died, and I got another job, so doing podcasting wasn’t even really on my radar.

On January 15, after realizing that Robin’s show was about to hit 500 episodes, an idea popped into my head. I know comics, and I know some people in comics, but I don’t know about what people actually do in comics. Where they came from, how they came to comics, why they do comics, how they do comics, what influenced the way they make comics…stuff like that. This stuff is usually beyond the purview of the hype-oriented interviews in comics, and that’s no good for me, because I really want to know this stuff.

Basically, I figured out how to satisfy my own curiosity in a way that might be entertaining to others, which is probably the whole reason I started a blog, and it was constructed in such a way that I couldn’t over-think it the way I do everything else. I couldn’t worry about crossing some invisible line of professionalism. I only had time to do it, and once it was done, I couldn’t take it back.

I made a list of people I thought were in interesting positions in the industry, and focused on people I haven’t interviewed or discussed before, with one exception. I emailed Robin with the idea and the list, and he was into it. I googled around for email addresses, DMed a few people on Twitter, did some research, came up with a few possible avenues of conversation, and then got started. Before the first show went up, I had the vast majority of them recorded. By the end of the first week of February, I had all of them done.

I think about the divisions in comics a lot, the way we’re bunched up into various factions. It’s shorthand, of course, but there’s TCJ comics, cape comics, mainstream comics, manga, and more. There are all these little islands of interests, and for the most part, they keep to their own. Inkstuds has its own remit, but I realized that I didn’t just want to limit myself to that audience. I was tempted to just post them here on 4thletter!, but I know the size of me and Gavin’s platform here, and I wanted something bigger. I reached out to Joe Hughes at ComicsAlliance with the idea. He was into it, and provided some feedback that I think made it a lot better.

Inkstuds and ComicsAlliance don’t have a lot of overlap in terms of audience, or at least it doesn’t feel that way going by what they each have covered, and I liked the idea of using both outlets to expose people to stuff they might not have known. Joe and Robin were both fine with me doing it on my own terms, too. I was thinking about the value of ownership and control even before CA closed last year, and the money in writing about comics simply isn’t good enough to do it any way but the way I (and you, if we’re being really real with each other) want to do it. So I laid out my terms and goals like a prima donna, they were fine with it, and we were off to the races with a project I maybe made more complicated than it had to be, but one I liked.

So, now that it’s all done, I wanted to publicly explain why I did it, and to say thank you to Joe and Robin for letting me borrow their platforms for selfish reasons. Darryl Ayo, Jay Potts, Jimmie Robinson, Whit Taylor, LeSean Thomas, Spike Trotman, and Qiana Whitted were incredibly generous with their time and thoughts, and each of them leapt at the chance to talk to me about my vague ideas, which I’m exceedingly grateful for. I learned a lot, and I’m very appreciative that they were down to chat. I left every conversation energized about comics and making stuff, which is a sometimes-rare feeling and almost the whole entire point of the entire project.

Thanks for listening.

Jay Potts is a cool dude, the creator of World of Hurt, and a blaxploitation genius. His Kickstarter campaign to get his webcomic printed has about seven days and a thousand bucks to go. He’s SUPER close to his goal, so if you’ve got the scratch, you should kick him a few bucks. I think this is something really worth doing, otherwise I wouldn’t be posting about it. For the folks who didn’t see my previous posts, here’s a quote from the campaign:

The first storyline, entitled “The Thrill-Seekers” finds Pastor in the middle of a search for a missing college student named Alicia Patterson. When Pastor’s missing person case turns into a murder investigation, his relentless quest for justice takes him from the city’s ghetto to a secret club of powerful, high society hedonists.

This Kickstarter project was started out of my desire to raise the funds to self-publish a graphic novel which collects the The Thrill-Seekers storyline. The graphic novel will also feature bonus material, such as production sketches, layouts and an introduction by author and filmmaker, David Walker of BadAzzMofo.com. The graphic novel will be an 88-page hardcover book with a landscape format of 13″ X 6.5″ to match the original dimensions of the comic strip. Although the interiors will be black & white, the cover will be in full color. Part of the Kickstarter funds will also be used to pay for an artist to paint over my cover pencils to recreate the classic, pulp feel of a Blaxploitation movie poster.

If you read the interview I did with Jay last year, you know that this guy is seriously talented. Give him a hand.

–The Comic Book Guide to the Mission is an anthology of stories edited and curated by my friend Lauren Davis. She enlisted some great writers and artists to tell stories about San Francisco’s the Mission. There’s a wide spectrum of experiences in the book, and it’s a neat trip through an area that I rarely visit for some reason.

-Jay Potts, creator of World of Hurt, has started a Kickstarter campaign to get his webcomic printed in a nice HC. A quote from the page:

The first storyline, entitled “The Thrill-Seekers” finds Pastor in the middle of a search for a missing college student named Alicia Patterson. When Pastor’s missing person case turns into a murder investigation, his relentless quest for justice takes him from the city’s ghetto to a secret club of powerful, high society hedonists.

This Kickstarter project was started out of my desire to raise the funds to self-publish a graphic novel which collects the The Thrill-Seekers storyline. The graphic novel will also feature bonus material, such as production sketches, layouts and an introduction by author and filmmaker, David Walker of BadAzzMofo.com. The graphic novel will be an 88-page hardcover book with a landscape format of 13″ X 6.5″ to match the original dimensions of the comic strip. Although the interiors will be black & white, the cover will be in full color. Part of the Kickstarter funds will also be used to pay for an artist to paint over my cover pencils to recreate the classic, pulp feel of a Blaxploitation movie poster.

You might remember Jay from this monster interview from last year’s Black History Month series. I’m a pretty smart guy, and I’m smart enough to know that Jay is somebody worth paying attention to. I’m planning to donate to the campaign because, my fetish for digital books aside, this is a book I wouldn’t mind owning in print. World of Hurt is good, man.

-I bought Joell Ortiz’s Free Agent the other day. It leaked late last year on Amazon and was quickly pulled. I forgot about it until recently, and found that it actually came out in February. It’s not bad, maybe a solid B. He uses a little too much hashtag rap (That’s where you kick a punchline and then explain it… Drake.) for my tastes, but Ortiz is an extremely lyrical dude. For every hashtag rap he kicks, he busts out several tongue twisting skyscrapers, so I guess I can’t complain too much. It sticks out like a sore thumb, though. The title is apt–it feels like an album where he’s trying to prove his worth. He raps about himself, rapping, murder, drugs, and women (hip-hop’s favorite subject matter, in order of popularity) and does it well.

The guest features are surprising solid. Joe Crack goes in on his, but the highlight is probably “Put Some Money On It,” where the Lox, especially Styles P, come off real hungry. Jada’s got that old Raekwon slow-flow menace going on, too. “Killing niggas with the flow, H1N1.” “Call Me” makes me hope that Novel and Joell put together a full-length that I can buy some day. They work well together.

Johanna Draper Carlson has the details on who won what at this past weekend’s Glyph Comics Awards at ECBACC. She also has some interesting remarks on the awards, particularly in terms of women represented and the number of projects that won multiple awards.

Here’s the list, and commentary/thoughts from me below.

Story of the Year
Unknown Soldier #13-14, Joshua Dysart, writer, Pat Masioni, artist

Best Writer
Alex Simmons, Archie & Friends

Best Artist
Jay Potts, World of Hurt

Best Male Character
Isaiah Pastor, World of Hurt, created by Jay Potts, writer and artist

Best Female Character
Aya, Aya: The Secrets Come Out, created by Marguerite Abouet, writer, Clement Oubrerie, artist

Rising Star Award
Jay Potts, World of Hurt

Best Reprint Publication
Aya: The Secrets Come Out, Drawn & Quarterly

Best Cover
Luke Cage Noir #1, Tim Bradstreet, illustrator

Best Comic Strip
The K Chronicles, Keith Knight, writer and artist

Fan Award for Best Comic
Luke Cage Noir, Mike Benson & Adam Glass, writers, Shawn Martinbrough, artist

I’m not sure of the protocol on judges speaking after the fact, so if I’ve over-stepped, please forgive me. I co-judged this years awards, and I’ve got to say that I’m pretty pleased with how they turned out. Here’s a few brief anecdotes/bits about the winners-

–Unknown Soldier 13 and 14 are collected in Unknown Soldier Vol. 2: Easy Kill. Dysart discusses a few of his favorite pages from that volume on DC’s Graphic Content blog. I talked a bit about Unknown Soldier last year as part of BHM, but I’m well past due for an update.

-In the “Small World” department, it turns out Alex Simmons co-created the dead and forgotten DC hero Orpheus, who I did a poor job of writing about a few years back. Simmons has been telling all-ages tales on Archie & Friends for the past couple years, in addition to documentaries, biographies, working with MoCCA, and launching a comic convention. The paths people take in comics are kind of funny sometimes. I think Tom DeFalco and Herb Trimpe have both done work on the Archie comics in recent memory, to name a couple other names you probably recognize. Archie & Friends All-Stars Volume 3: The Cartoon Life Of Chuck Clayton is the trade collecting the story of Chuck Clayton, “teenage cartoonist” and former Generic Comic Book Black Guy.

-Jay Potts cleaned up! Read my interview with him and then go read World of Hurt.

–I’m glad Abouet and Oubrerie’s Aya got some attention.

–Luke Cage Noir is out in a premiere hardcover, and it was a pretty good tale. I didn’t talk about it on the site, but the Funnybook Babylon gang mostly dug it. I liked how it played upon some of my preconceived notions going into the book, and the creators did a good job of telling a solid done-in-one tale. Here’s the cover:

-I like that most of these aren’t from the Big Two. I don’t say that to be mean or whatever, because the Big Two do what they do fairly well for the most part, but I think the really important work, the stuff you need to be paying attention two, aren’t going to come out of their factories. Supporting black comics isn’t supporting Luke Cage. It’s supporting the people who make the books. I think the Glyph awards do a great job of representing that. Bravo.

The nice thing about interviewing people is that sometimes they manage to school you. I thought I knew a little bit about blaxploitation, but Jay Potts, creator of World of Hurt, clearly has a PHD. I looked up some stuff, added others to my Netflix, and came out of this a better, more knowledgeable man. I figure you will, too. His dissection of who Luke Cage is- whoo. I hope Jeff Parker’s going to be using that for his Thunderbolts run.

World of Hurt is, to put it simply, a Blaxploitation web comic. Isaiah Pastor is a good man who does bad things for good reasons. Really, that’s all you need to know. The comic updates on Wednesdays and Jay generally has a good review or blog post each week, too. It’s must-reading. Follow him on Twitter if you’ve got one.

The images in this post are the first six episodes of World of Hurt. They are, of course, the property, intellectual and otherwise, of Jay. If you like them, click over to the site and start reading weekly. If you’d rather read them on his site, check out the first episode here. The ones here are a little smaller than his, but if you click, they’ll go big.

Finally, if Jay recommends some music or a movie? Get up on it asap. Trust me.

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-Who is Jay Potts? I saw on your site that you went to SCAD. Did you focus on comics while you were there, or were you more interested in fine art or some other discipline?

Heh. I’m still trying to find out who ‘Jay Potts’ is! I’m a corporate paralegal by occupation, and artist by inclination. I enjoy politics and hiking. I have lovely, talented, smart fiancée named Noelle, a dog named Hoppie, and a black cat named Boo. Amongst the three, I’m not sure who’s my biggest fan. 

I started out in the graduate program in Illustration at SCAD, but I quickly transitioned to Sequential Art. Until going to SCAD, I was self-taught, so I was introduced to concepts and ideas that I had never heard of before. I had great professors, like James Sturm, who went on to found the Center For Cartoon Studies, Bob Pendarvis, and Mark Kneece who were fantastic. Mostly, I enjoyed interacting with peers who treated cartooning as an art form and not a hobby, and this was the first time I ever had the opportunity to enjoy that sort of give-and-take and interaction. I learned so much about storytelling and the creative process from just talking to those guys and watching their own process. That interaction, and the friendships I forged in Savannah, were invaluable.
 
-Rather than employing the tongue-in-cheek tone of Afrodisiac or Black Dynamite, World of Hurt is very straightforward- it’s a black action film on paper. Why’d you choose to do a straight blaxploitation comic, rather than updating it as others have?

Although I think that, sparingly, the tongue-in-cheek treatment of Blaxploitation can be a legitimate way to approach the film genre, but for the most part it seems to be the ONLY way that is ever used. I wanted to try something else. Also, I would put Afrodisiac and Black Dynamite in a slightly different category from films like Undercover Brother or I’m Gonna Git You Sucka or Greg Houston’s graphic novel, Vatican Hustle. In the first two you can not only see a familiarity with Blaxploitation, but a real understanding and reverence for it. These guys KNOW their subject, and the work is steeped in that knowledge. There are plenty of Easter eggs for Blaxploitation fans buried in the work, and those references are tweaked and subverted for comedic effect. For example, in “She Came From Venus,” an 8-page Afrodisiac tale, Rugg references Godfrey Cambridge and Raymond St. Jacques‘ portrayals of Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson in Cotton Comes To Harlem, Calvin Lockhart, Robert DoQui in Coffy, and a classic Max Julien in The Mack and still delivers a heckuva story. That’s reference and reverence. In works like Undercover Brother, the surface elements of Blaxploitation are skimmed for cheap laughs for people who know nothing about Blaxploitation other than some dim cultural memory of bellbottoms and pimps in giant hats and ermine capes.
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