My Presidential Portrait

The Obamas' presidential portraits were unveiled on a couple weeks ago. As every possible news story does, this led me to thinking of the event with a comic book filter.

If I had been President and needed to invite one artist to make my portrait, who would I choose?

I'd want to have that line work look, but without going a complete 180 degree turn from the more traditional oil paintings.

The obvious choice would be to get Bill Sienkiewicz to do it. We've all seen the portraits he's thrown out on social media in the last couple years of various people in the news. His presidential portrait would be edgier, but with the flair of a gifted painter.

Also, my resemblance to Marty Feldman is uncanny...

The first thought that came to my mind, though, was Joe Quesada with Richard Isanove. We've seen Quesada do some likenesses in the past, and Isanove could use a slightly painterly style to his coloring to make it look more "traditional." And I would want to look slightly cartoony, anyway.

I just wonder if I could convince him to do it without drawing a Mets baseball cap on my head.

Now, if I wanted to go in a different direction and look more like James Bond, I might go with J. Scott Campbell, maybe paired with Jean-Francois Beaulieu. I bet I'd look REALLY good in a tuxedo in that image, and Campbell is an accomplished caricaturist.

Who would you pick for yours? Adam Hughes? Jim Lee? Lee Bermejo?

Bonus idea: At the end of my term, I would commission Sergio Aragones to draw a picture of every member of the White House staff, probably in a cutaway of The White House, itself. It'd be a huge poster -- so big that it might take Aragones a whopping two days to draw it.

The Business of Comics

Thread!

This is Sean Gordon Murphy talking about some of the hard, cold realities of making comics for a living. He made $3000 the first year "Off Road" was available. Now he's near the top of the heap.

Yet, life is still not cheap.

Honestly, I can't imagine why anyone in their right minds would pursue comic book creation as their career goal these days.

There, I said it.

The numbers just don't add up, except for the few who hit near the top of the heap through some combination of luck, timing, and hard work. You pretty much need all three. Do you want to bet the farm on those odds?

I like comics; I'd never attempt to make a living on them. It's just not responsible.

Murphy, by the way, is one of the smartest creators I've ever read/heard talking about the career of comics. Few are the writers and artists in this industry who know anything about business. He's one of them. Look up any of the podcasts he's done for evidence of this.

By the way, J. Scott Campbell is another one of those successful business minds in the world of comics. Look carefully at how he handles his career, maximizes his opportunities, caters to his fans, and creates a steady stream of business opportunities for himself.

Yeah, I wish he'd draw more comic book interiors, too, but why bother? At this point, it would be a waste of his time.

Is that an indictment of the Direct Market? The state of publishing today? Publishers? The audience?

I wish I knew.

The fact of the matter is that there just isn't a large enough audience for this material to make a real serious career of it for a creator. Maximizing your niche is the name of the game.

Unionizing won't help it, either. Sure, it might shore up page rates and stabilize things for a very short time, but as the economics of comics continues to slump and slowly degrade, either rates will just sink again, or publishers will go out of business or turn to IP farming in lieu of publishing.

In the end, all comic book publishing is just treading water for the big Hollywood pay out. Go ahead. Tell me I'm wrong. Publishers either go out of business or sell themselves to Hollywood as their exit strategy. (See DC, Marvel, CrossGen, and Valiant for starters.)

I wish the audience was large enough for this not to be true. It hasn't been in thirty years.

Maybe it will grow to a respectable size in a generation or so when Generation Raina grows up and seeks out new material and creates new material for itself. Somehow, I doubt that success will be seen via the Direct Market via comic book publishers in the traditional way we all think of first.

So, uhm, yeah. They're not going to ask me to do the next State of the Comics Union Address now, are they?

But I'm going to have an amazing portrait...

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