Brilliant work.

We still have not embraced the elegant, delicate flaws in our bodies. In my life, I have taken a number of figure drawing classes and have seen all shapes, all sizes, all aspects of the human body. A beautiful engine, our bodies; indifferent to size, shape, or color.

Photo manipulation tools obscure that subtle beauty in an opaque, gossamer veil of preconceived perfection. A synthetic human, a replicant, dressed in pixels. A ghost made by the machine.

Sometimes, I feel as though we’re walking backwards, missing the world in front of us.

‘Work for hire’ is a contract used for freelance illustrators which effectively signs away any rights they might have over the artwork they create with company-owned properties.

DC Comics, a division of Warner Brothers, is repackaging the Year One series without working with Mazzucchelli, and he’s understandably frustrated at the quality:

“DC just sent me this book last week, and I really hope people don’t buy it. I didn’t even know they were making it, and I don’t understand why they thought it was necessary — several years ago, DC asked me if I’d help put together a deluxe edition of Batman: Year One, and Dale Crain and I worked for months to try to make a definitive version. Now whoever’s in charge has thrown all that work in the garbage.”

A few points on this, as an outsider (‘outsider’ being the operative word):

• DC is in no way obligated to Mazzucchelli on a corporate level, given the contracts involved in the agreement, even though he produced truly amazing work for the series and obviously wants to retain the dignity, the integrity of his work.
• DC should politically engender themselves to work with Mazzucchelli to ensure quality control standards are in place with the artist intimate to the project.
• This is a management challenge regardless of the legalities – corporate mentality operating squarely within the purview of a creative environment or, if you like, a corporate environment working under the constraints of a creative field.
• I don’t believe Mazzucchelli has control issues in this situation. He has quality control concerns. I also believe that’s an important distinction to make.

As an artist, I empathize with Mazzucchelli, but I don’t feel it’s good form to go on record against your employer. That’s compounding a disservice with another disservice. First, I’d assume Mazzucchelli would get royalties off the sales, so it’s a little bit self-destructive biting the hand that feeds. Second, doing so quite possibly kills any chances of getting further work (which he may not care about).

A better approach to this might have been to say ‘I was uninvolved with this project’ while aiming the conversation directly at the previous version on which he did have some creative control.

It’s an honest, more respectful compromise. Mazzucchelli wins. DC wins. Comic fans win.

“It’s our responsibility as publishers to find new ways to keep all of our characters relevant. After 25 years, the Watchmen are classic characters whose time has come for new stories to be told.”

Alan Moore, infamous writer of The Watchmen (and slightly less-known for his worship of sock puppet snakes), on the situation:

“I tend to take this latest development as a kind of eager confirmation that they are still apparently dependent on ideas that I had 25 years ago.”

I love Moore’s writing, which includes the quintessential Joker story, The Killing Joke, as well as his work on The Swamp Thing. I’d argue The Anatomy Lesson in his Swamp Thing run is one of the strongest stories ever conceived in comics.

Apparently, the comedian isn’t dead after all…

Readers make the narrative connections for themselves.

Treat your readers like intelligent people. Good advice.

The opening bit illustrates the advantages of this approach as they relate to Where the Wild Things Are and, though the rest of the article uses web projects as examples, one could easily translate the points to a context more conducive to sequential storytelling.