Blood, Sweat & Twitter: One Woman Paul Pope fandom? Bitches, please

Good friend of the blog and semi-committal comics reader Camden had the, what, dumb luck?, no, unique opportunity to see Paul Pope talk about his craft during spring break. So of course we thought it would be a perfect opportunity to have her share with our readers here something of her experience. What her piece here seems to get at it is how Paul Pope has a certain something, a bit of the rock star, almost, about him that sets him apart from other comics artists. What she doesn't mention is how she had to be talked into ditching her dad's girlfriend's middle school musical to go see Paul Pope. She also doesn't mention the octopus drawing she commissioned for me. -d

I had the absolute privilege of seeing Paul Pope speak at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, which is where I live in real life. San Francisco Bay Area, not the Cartoon Art Museum, although the Cartoon Art Museum is a real treat and I do wish I had been less starstruck by His Popeliness to wander around a bit more, as they had some really cool stuff on display.

Now, you must understand where I come, pulphopefully speaking. I have been a fan of Paul Pope for about a year. David gave me a copy of Heavy Liquid to read on a plane. I think I finished it before my plane even left the airport. It was a magical moment for me. Later after I expressed my enjoyment of Heavy Liquid in several exclamation-laced sentences, David handed me 100% which I of course adored with the passion of a thousand burning suns and thus my love for Paul Pope was solidified for all eternity. I love the man and his work and though I have no background whatsoever in illustration or comics, I think his storytelling is phenomenal.

So like any good fangirl after her first fannish epiphany, I googled him, put his blogspot on my Google reader, added him on Flickr and called it a day. Later realizing that his blogspot is one of the least informative sources on all things Pulphope, at least in terms of his actual Goings On, I set up a Google alert which sent me emails every day containing extensive articles about Pope John Paul II and the occasional article casually using Paul Pope’s name in reference to something that invariably had very little to do with him. One time an actual interview with him came up! That was real exciting. Another time MTV referenced his twitter! So I added him to my Twitter feed and promptly forgot about it. Then I cut the alert email, because it was annoying.

This entire process took about thirty minutes, not counting the time I took, one day, to go back, starry-eyed, through his flickr. I merely wanted to make sure I got up-to-date information on whatever he happened to be putting out or where he might be going and signing stuff or what have you, since he is not a man who seems to make many formal appearances and who does not rapidly produce work, at least new comics. I also wanted a peek inside that magnificent brain of his, having so very little knowledge of him. I’m an English major prone to close-reading and obsessive analyzing and the only thing I have ever learned is that too much information is never enough. Twitter, Flickr, and a blog? That’s me not even trying.

Anyway, I received an email from The Cartoon Art Museum the day before the event telling me that the actual Paul Pope would be in MY STATE talking about HIS COMICS and I flipped.

I was disappointed in the talk, sort of. Forty-five minutes of talking (split between Pope and Dr Michael B Johnson talking and an audience Q&A) was never going to be enough for me, and certainly did not satisfy my desire to know more. Nevertheless, I was pleased with what I got. Johnson obviously knows Pope well and had me scrawling down illegible notes in one of my school books regarding Pope’s answers. They covered a fair bit of the artist's history, which I do feel most people could have gotten had they spent more than thirty minutes on the internet looking for tidbits of his life. I was content to learn about this part of his life though, given I’ve heard all of one interview with him. It was an interesting interview to bear witness to, and I enjoyed it, honest. It just wasn’t long enough.

However, they opened the talk with a brief poll of the audience. Who here is involved with the creation of comics (writing, drawing, etc)? At least half the audience. Who here is involved with projects around comics (apparently this means movies)? The other half of the audience. Even the surly-looking bro in the front row was an artist. I sat in my corner of the room, clutching my stupid books and thinking great, here we go, an entire talk about the industry, something I care very little about except in the context of how the industry affects the art which in Paul Pope’s case, as I learned that evening, is very little for everything between THB and Batman Year 100, and then again after the publication of Batman 100. (At this point in his career, the man is basically unstoppable. And he knows it.) But maybe there’ll be something of interest?

No. Take a crowd of mostly young and hip artists and comics dudes who are precisely the age group to which the iPhone is marketed and the first Q&A is a question about what brushes Pope uses. Um, what? He’s answered that question like a million times on twitter, dude. Or at least once and I’m sure that question has come up before. He suffered a few other questions about his art – do you thumbnail, what kind of paper do you use, what kind of ink do you use, what would you change about your art if you could start from the beginning – before I finally managed to steel myself.

I raised my hand in a sea of seemingly informed Paul Pope fans and I inquired politely as to what the fuck Shakedown actually is and what is he doing there and oh my god Paul Pope and burlesque how perfect etc, and a man sitting near me asked, “what burlesque are you talking about?”

WHAT?

Apparently the rest of the crowd looked fairly mystified as well and a quick explanation was in order. It is not, Paul the Illustrious said, him doing burlesque. (“Oh damn,” said half the crowd sadly, including me.) It is a show that he helped to organize with his girlfriend who is a burlesque artist. I was moved to tears, he said, at a burlesque show I went to, and I wanted to give back to this community that inspired me.

YOU’RE SO GREAT OH MY GOD I said in my head. The Q&A session moved on while I hung back, shocked – shocked! – at the ignorance of these young hip comics peeps around me. Dude next to me had a website for his comics. This other guy used ebay to buy Pulphope swag. Clearly an internet savvy crowd, as anyone over the age of two is wont to be. And yet they’d never heard of the Shakedown shows? Were they stupid? Did they just not pay attention? Was everyone here a pretender and I alone was the only true Paul Pope fangirl? Was I, in fact, the only Paul Pope stalker in the room?

Impossible. I’ve never even read all of THB. I read like half an issue once and got distracted by pasta. But Shakedown is all over his blog and his twitter and check out sheer amount of scans and photos of his art for Shakedown on his flickr. His enthusiasm for Shakedown, whatever it may be, is impossible to miss even if you visit his blog a mere once a month.

So what gives, dudes? A twenty-one year old with no independent interest in comics outside of Kate Beaton should not be more informed than you, actual comics creators with decades of knowledge, on the goings-and-comings of Paul Pope. Everyone who attended the event – and there were quite a few, standing room only – was clearly a fan. So what’s with the ignorance? Is it willful? That stupid misled fan desire to keep the creative separate from the man? But Paul Pope himself talked about “skingrafting [his] identity” onto the character of Batman in Batman Year 100 and anyone with eyes knows that it is utterly impossible to get away from Paul Pope in Paul Pope’s work. Furthermore, Paul Pope produces too little work that is so immediately difficult to get hold of that it strikes me as utterly stupid not to devote a little time and energy into keeping up with him. Particularly in something that is so obviously important and interesting and exciting to him.

Plus, it’s burlesque. Paul Pope and burlesque.

So come on, motherfuckers, get it together.

"Entitlement issues..."

When a lot of the stuff you like is comics or sci-fi novels, it's easy to forget it's still "art" or "literature" and that the creators/"artists" are allowed to work on their own timelines. We expect a monthly comic to be out on time, each and every month, upholding the quality and never disappointing us and we get real mad when a series of books or a mini-series or whatever falls behind or disappears for quite some time. But the real sin of deadlines is when you break that deadline, maybe even destroy that deadline--and the work's just not that good.

Mark Millar's constant delays are infuriating because there is rarely a payoff, the characters and overall plot seem to change direction every issue, like he can't decide on where it's going--the story falls apart and the long gaps cause many to lose interest. In contrast, David Petersen's Mouse Guard, is worth the wait. Each and every issue of the original series and the new "Winter 1152" has been continuity-driven enough for long time readers, but also inviting to newcomers. We are rewarded by the wait on Mouse Guard because being allowed to take his time, Petersen can work on the lore of the Guard as a whole, while making each issue engaging on it's own.

Recently on Neil Gaiman's blog, he responded to a question from a fan regarding what level of commitment a writer of a series has to their fans. The series in question is written by George R.R. Martin, the fan feeling "increasingly frustrated with Martin's lack of communication on the next novel's publication date." Gaiman's initial, pithy response is "George R.R. Martin is not your bitch." This is completely legit, because he is, in fact, not the bitch of Gareth or any other fanboy who expects things from writers. This isn't Marvel Comics or DC we're talking about, it's a single man writing a series with characters who he owns, and can do with what he pleases.

If you take the time to head over to Georgie-boy's blog (or rather, not a blog, a Livejournal), you quickly learn that it's more of an insight into the man himself, and not his work. He posts pictures of his role playing game figures, thoughts on movies and his excitement over the series in question being filmed for the big screen. Martin makes a point to not talk about his book's progress or the contents of the new stories, which could be because he wants to keep everything a surprise or because he's not working on anything. No matter the case, it's his right as not only an artist, but a goddamned human, to write about what he choses on his personal website...and it is certainly not his responsibility to keep anyone but his publisher updated on the status of his books.

When did fans become so demanding? If each and every writer took the advice of all their fans and tried to make everyone happy, their books would never come out or be released with a different story than the author wanted. Authors should be able to take the same time with their writing that painters take with their paintings. It is a process to create and that takes time and energy, two things that aren't always available. Who knows how many times George R.R. Martin has started but could not finish the next installment, or how many times he's gone back to completely change the entire book because he himself has learned something new about one of the characters, or was inspired by a new place or person he met. Who knows if Martin even wants to continue writing the series?

Recently Marvel started rereleasing Ultimate Hulk Vs. Wolverine, the first two issues had been released in December of 2005 and January 2006, but the full series was set-back by constant delays. Although I wanted the entire series, the two issues in existence were, in a way, perfect, and the cliff hanger ending of issue #2 left you wanting more, but satisfied with the series. The artist Leinil Yu's popularity grew after drawing Secret Invasion and so they brought back the series, but it sucked. I wish I had never read the third through sixth issues because the beauty of the first two had been tainted by the downright awful four new issues. It felt like the series was over for both the writer and artist, and so they just finished the book not really caring about where it went, but that it closed a chapter in the Ultimate Universe.

If they had had the time in the beginning, if the interest of the fans was there, the series may have been one of the best "Vs." books of all time. Even the two single issues that were written for the six issue series were better than most full, completed story arcs. The two creators lost interest in the series, but because of "Ultimatum", an event in the Ultimate Marvel Universe where all the heroes and villains die, is taking place right now, Marvel just wanted to tie up some loose ends. The series should've been left alone, but because the creators had their hands forced, it ended poorly, and now when I think of the series, I'm just bummed about the half-assed completion, and I'm not at all excited about the great first two issues.

Most sci-fi and comics readers (see: nerds) are obsessive in a way they don't realize, knowing every DC super hero's secret identity, all of the names and back stories of everyone in Jabba's Palace or all the Pokemon and their evolutionary lines. They have a love for the work and have devoted a part of themselves to it.

The kinds of fans who want more stories do one of two things: bitch and moan on the internet, expecting things from people they don't know, or take things into their own hands, making fanfics or creating their own new stories. They want something more from the characters, not the writers, and because the characters are so alive to them, they don't understand that someone has to give them life, and if you're one of the former and don't have the imagination, you are left waiting. You write on message boards theorizing about what's next and are angry that George R.R. Martin is just so damn lazy.

If Martin forced himself to write books he wasn't ready to write, as Gaiman notes, his fans would scold him for ruining the series they loved. It's better to enjoy what someone has given you than to expect the writer to push themselves too hard and give you one book that ruins the other four. Just be happy that you liked the first part enough to read a sequel, even if you never get it.