A Single-Act Drama Concerning The Current Financial Crisis

5 Comments | Posted: September 22nd, 2008 | Filed under: "Funny" | Tags: ,


The Rack | Gothic Architecture

Comments Off | Posted: September 22nd, 2008 | Filed under: Shameless Self-Promotion | Tags:


Everybody thinks they know how you should do your job.

“Show Me Your Genitals 2: E=MC Vagina” by Jon LaJoie

Comments Off | Posted: September 20th, 2008 | Filed under: Uncategorized


(See Previously.)

I finally talk about some comics I’ve actually purchased.

3 Comments | Posted: September 19th, 2008 | Filed under: Reviews | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Please note that these sort of reviews are going to be more sporadic going forward. I’m only buying a few titles a week and with people like Sims and Caleb writing nicely about the periodic titles, I just don’t see why you’d want me to bleat on very often.

Anyway.

The last issue of All-Star Superman is just about perfect. I won’t lie: I had a lump in my throat at least twice, but I am a soft damn touch when it comes to a well-done Superman story and this whole thing was exactly that. It was lovely to see a pair of creators who work so well together embrace the truly bizarre mythos attached to the character and use them for maximum effect while doing something new. While I’m certain I’ll enjoy upcoming Superman stories in the future, I’m also pretty sure that they’ll feel just the slightest bit hollow and sad in comparison.

The debut for Age of the Sentry features a flying corgi (complete with cape) and The Mad Thinker and The Terrible Tinkerer disguising themselves as directors shooting a series of public service announcements with a parasitic camera that sucks the title character’s strength and powers away. Yes, I’ll be reading more, particularly with Paul Tobin and Nick Dragotta involved.

David Tischman and Glenn Fabry’s Greatest Hits is so thunderingly obvious in concept that I’m shocked that I’ve not seen it before: Four British Pop Superheroes During The Sixties Operating As An Analogue To That Most Famous Of Pop Groups. It’s funny and savvy while offering further evidence that Vertigo’s slow reinvention of itself that began a couple years ago is a good thing.

Marvel Adventures Avengers continues to be the only iteration of that most favored of superhero team books that I’m reading. While Mighty Avengers and New Avengers (and soon, Dark Avengers, Nude Avengers and Diet Avengers) continue to ably serve as The Brian Michael Bendis Event Comic Backstory Hour, this comic actually – get this – has a team called “The Avengers” who go out and have adventures! This issue featured Luke Cage and His Momma and a story in which a cat from another dimension needed rescuing, along with a smartmouthed Hammerhead. That sort of thing is certainly more entertaining to me than Skrulls repeatedly cloning Reed Richards until one of the major plot holes of Secret Invasion gets filled in.

Finally, I found myself very much enjoying Jonathan Lethem and Farel Dalrymple’s Omega The Unknown despite my distaste for the author’s prose novels. It reads like a Jim Jarmusch superhero movie, sort of Ghost Dog meeting Spider-Man with enough truly Weird Shit to compare favorably with the original book that spawned it. Dalrymple’s art is as perfect a complement as I could imagine for the script: intentionally flat to the point that the surreal elements – a giant walking hand, for instance – pop that much more. Marvel’s $30 pricepoint may seem a bit high, Amazon has it for a very reasonable $20.

The Rack | The High Ground

1 Comment | Posted: September 19th, 2008 | Filed under: Shameless Self-Promotion | Tags:


You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, yadda yadda yadda.

Comics Marketing: Social Media Is Not The Answer, Even If You Want It To Be.

15 Comments | Posted: September 18th, 2008 | Filed under: Thinking about Comics Marketing | Tags: ,

Facebook is one of the best timekillers/ad display ideas that’s come across in quite some time. Where MySpace reveled in its Geocities-meets-Friendster garishness, Facebook made everyone conform to some sort of design standard and made sure that nobody in the office would know you were visiting the site due to an errant profile blaring “Crank That.” It gives you one “landing page” that lets you see whatever activity your friends wish to share with you and access to the various applications you may want to use.


As a marketing tool, it offers a nice extension of your brand, giving people who enjoy your comic book/strip a place to gather and talk about your projects:


However, this is why I would never, ever use it as my sole online presence versus having my own domain as the primary point of contact between me and the customer base:


Despite the fact that Facebook is free and super-easy to get involved with, that little login section is a barrier between the customer and you. Marketing is, at its core, about eliminating those barriers and making sure that your audience is able to listen to what you’re trying to say with as little work as possible.

More and more I’m seeing creators (such as Billy Tucci in Chris Sims’s comments) using Facebook as their main method of communicating to their fans. While I can see the appeal: it’s free and easy as hell, it’s not an example of reaching out with your message. Instead, Facebook groups and the like are preaching to the choir: people that have already added you as a contact. They know what you’re selling. Throw in the fact that all of your content is hidden from the search engines because of its closed system and it’s plain to see that Facebook is lousy for acquiring active, inquisitive customers unless you’ve got a social media manager doing the heavy lifting and customer engagement for you.

It boils down to this: If you’re serious about your product, you should have your own domain. If you can’t spend $10 a month maintaining your own domain, then maybe you’re not serious enough about your business. Business cards and emails shouldn’t feature a url like http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=26254088540 or http://www.myspace.com/therackcomic on them: they should present something that anyone can type in within seconds and look at what you’re trying to sell, be it www.therackcomic.com or http://www.dccomics.com.

Once you’re up and running, it’s important to note that almost every webhost in the world allows you to add a new domain to your existing account with them for the cost of registering a URL. With Dreamhost, it’s literally two minutes from “I want to buy a domain” to starting the initial stages of development, which in many cases could be a basic WordPress installation, a template that will be customized, and a nice gallery package: perfect for title-specific websites. A great example of this is PhonogramComic.com, even with their “click here to enter” front page.

It’s easier than ever for creators and publishers to have a platform that allows people from anywhere in the world to see what they have to offer. Facebook and the like provide an easy way to do things, but it’s not the best way. Each new project is a chance to sell more of your work to new people – do the lifting so they don’t have to. Use social media and networking sites to fire up your existing base and keep them abreast of things, but use the web to get new people on board.

I am SO obsessed with this.

8 Comments | Posted: September 17th, 2008 | Filed under: Music, Video | Tags: ,


I would like this and the Spider-Man newspaper strip in cheap reprints, please.

8 Comments | Posted: September 17th, 2008 | Filed under: Comics Art | Tags:

The Rack | Subscriptive

6 Comments | Posted: September 17th, 2008 | Filed under: Shameless Self-Promotion | Tags:


Coming back to your job after a workplace can be difficult

For this, I’d stop playing that used copy of Vice City Stories.

5 Comments | Posted: September 16th, 2008 | Filed under: "Funny" | Tags:

Marvel’s Civil War as montage: the Remix.

5 Comments | Posted: September 16th, 2008 | Filed under: "Funny", Video | Tags: , ,

A bit of context, before the show. Many fans have taken it upon themselves to create collage trailers for comics storylines as movies using pieces of existing footage from films. One person in particular had done an interesting take on Civil War that included footage from almost every Marvel Comics-based movie to date, with the notable exception of the Corman-produced Fantastic Four. It’s well-executed and portentous with a few “Oh, hey!” moments. The only problem I had was with the musical selection, which was overbearing and made the entire production seem a bit po-faced.

So I fixed that.

The Rack | Staff Picks for the Week of September 16

1 Comment | Posted: September 16th, 2008 | Filed under: Shameless Self-Promotion | Tags:


Recommendations from the staff of your favorite fictional comic shop are up for your review!

This is the first thing I thought of when McKelvie showed me this image.

13 Comments | Posted: September 15th, 2008 | Filed under: "Funny", Thinking About Comics | Tags: , ,

Dear Fans, Part 01

5 Comments | Posted: September 15th, 2008 | Filed under: "Funny", Thinking About Comics | Tags:

The Rack | A Close Shave

1 Comment | Posted: September 15th, 2008 | Filed under: Shameless Self-Promotion | Tags:


In this installment, you see the results of Lydia’s chicanery and get an apology from me, the co-creator!. C’mon! Click it! Do it!

Birdie and I get interviewed.

Comments Off | Posted: September 12th, 2008 | Filed under: Shameless Self-Promotion | Tags:

Birdie and I were interviewed for GamingAngels.com. If you don’t like us enough to read our words, XKCD’s Randall Monroe also makes an appearance to talk about his fine webcomic.

Tell us a bit about “The Rack”, how long have you been publishing it? Where did the inspiration come from?

Birdie: Oh boy, it was like a year old last February? So about a year and a half? The inspiration came from me wondering why there wasn’t a Penny Arcade for comic books, since Penny Arcade was a comic. Why had no one thought up one about actual comics? So I floated the idea past Kevin and in like a weekend he came back to me with this spectacular bible filled with all the characters you know and love (except Rick, who was all me). And I knew, reading it, that the strip had suddenly gone from a wacky commentary on the ebb and flow of the comic industry to a truly great character-based comic strip.

Church: What he said.

If you can’t tell, I want more people to interview Birdie so I can just nod in the background.

Five Haikus about fairly awful sitcoms.

28 Comments | Posted: September 12th, 2008 | Filed under: "Funny" | Tags:

1.
Super-gay neighbor
Two hot daughters and a wife
Puppet on his hand

2.
From a foreign land
He landed in Chicago
“Cut it out!” was quipped

3.
Johnny Fever moved
His microphone left behind now
The gifted class waits

4.
Two men with one child
Paul Reiser without Miss Hunt
That’s a great beard

5.
Bob Newhart, weary
A cartoonist out of time
Unbearably sad

The Rack | Pow!

8 Comments | Posted: September 12th, 2008 | Filed under: Shameless Self-Promotion | Tags:


And now, back to the action..

Kevin Church Plays Records: Fall 2008 Edition

Comments Off | Posted: September 11th, 2008 | Filed under: Music, Shameless Self-Promotion | Tags: ,


So, back when I was a pluckier, spotted youth in that faraway decade known as “the nineties,” I used these strange devices called “turntables” to play dance records that I would then “mix together” to create a seamless musical environment that would encourage dancing. A couple of months ago, possibly inspired by too many purchases from the Fabric mix CD series and a sudden love for electro-house tracks, the bug bit me again and I started playing around with DJ software packages and performing live broadcasts on the web.


To make things brief, right-click (or control-click on the Mac) to download a 231 mb, two-hour, forty-five minute recording of last night’s set. It starts in media res because I’m stupid and forgot to hit the “Record” button until I was well and truly underway, and it’s all live, so there’s a few dodgy bits where the mixes aren’t spot-on. There’s over 30 records packed into this thing, so I’m not posting a track listing, but if you have any questions about a particular tune, just holler.

Please note that the remix of “Homecoming” by Teenagers at the 1:57 mark features language that some may find objectionable.

Super News: Uncle Sam and 9/11

1 Comment | Posted: September 11th, 2008 | Filed under: Think About It Won't You, Video | Tags: ,

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