Dino-Pirates of Ninja Island

Hardcore Geeking Alert.

I've mentioned dabbling in game design, courtesy of the Open Gaming License movement of D&D 3.0. I find it ridiculously gratifying that they're doing a full-on character write-up for an antagonist I created in Manual of the Planes.

Although I dig D&D 4.0, my favorite systems are True20 and Mutants & Masterminds. I'd like to point out a True20 variant published on the web by Scratch Factory. Dino-Pirates of Ninja Island is an elegant distillation of the True20 rules.

Also: DINO-PIRATES! AND NINJAS!

Love to see Corey convert it to a full on generalist pulp game. One of these days, Corey, I'll finish those damn vehicle combat rules ...

(NOTE: It would be remiss not to mention that Feng Sui was the greatest RPG and gameworld ever created. If there was an online CCG of Shadowfist I'd never get another lick of work done until I died of malnutrition nesting in my own filth in my Aero chair)

Killing the Buddha

How I wound up over there is way too long a story, but I just spent lunch zipping through the archives at Killing the Buddha, a great site discussing faith -- or as they call themselves, "a religious magazine for those made anxious by churches."

I particularly liked this article on the link between Protestant tradition, American exceptionalism, and their co-evolution into modern conservatism. It's an elegantr explanation of some hinks in national character I've spent years trying to explain to Canadian and European friends.

Waid Wednesdays #19: Covers, A Basic Primer

“Artist, please draw more attention to the severed head.”

Probably my favorite part of the editorial job--not co-plotting with writers, not copyediting scripts, not having the interns Google me all day--is working out covers. Part of that is because I’m a particularly visually minded editor, but mostly it’s because I still believe the cover is a key sales tool and sets the readers’ expectations for what’s actually inside the book in a way that nothing else can.

There was a time when the cover’s job was more important than it is today--back when all comics were basically an inexpensive impulse purchase from newsstands and from spinner racks, before fans began pre-ordering their comic books months in advance. Yes, most shops have new comics shelved so you can see the entire cover at once, which is a step up from newsstand displays that, at best, showed only the top third, but that doesn’t make cover art three times as important as it was--in the 21st century, most buyers have already committed to buying the newest issue of AVENGERS (or whatever) before they even walk into the store, regardless of what’s on the cover.

(And if you’ve ever wondered why so many modern covers are pin-up shots of characters rather than story-oriented illustrations, the answer’s generally twofold: pin-ups can be stockpiled in advance, and they can be repurposed for t-shirts and other merchandise at far less a cost than original material.)

That said--and feel free to call me Mr. Old-School--I still believe the cover’s primary job is to catch and hold the reader’s eye on the off-chance someone might actually be on the fence about picking it up. The cover’s not there to be a showcase for the artist, not to be lush or ornate just to show off, but to catch and hold attention amidst a sea of Wolverine comics.

The cover’s secondary job is to, with its frozen-moment single illustration, convey an idea. Extra points if the image makes me laugh out loud (like Nate Watson’s, shown above, even before I asked him to make the severed head bigger to help underscore the balance of comedy and horror of SCREAM QUEEN, about a serial killer who stalks a high school while dressed as its mascot).

When I commission a cover, I first ask for a couple of sketches--not because I feel the need to suggest a million “improvements,” but because I don’t want an artist to waste his time on anything that’s too close to a piece we’ve already done or that’s already in the works. Clever ideas outrank pin-ups, at least for me. A composition that tells me that the artist has a sense of design and isn’t just doodling kewl art onto the paper is critical. And (again, pointing to Nate Watson’s sketch here) the cover has to capture the feel of the series for new readers. Once the sketch has been approved, the artist turns it into a finished piece, remembering at all times (because I am a tyrant about them) my essential rules:

1. I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY HATE ILLUSTRATIONS THAT OBSCURE THE LOGO (a.k.a. the title of the magazine). You can get away with that more easily if, like Superman’s or Playboy’s, your logo is already instantly recognizable to a mass audience. “Cthulhu Tales” is not that logo. (A great logo is in and of itself a thing of beauty. And like most works of art, I can’t produce one myself but I know a good one when I see it. One of the all-time best logo designers is the multiple-award-winning letterer Todd Klein (Sandman, Swamp Thing), who regularly runs in-depth studies on what makes logo designs work or not work. I implore you to go visit his site to read the analysis of someone exponentially more qualified than I am to explain the do’s and don’ts.

2. LOGOS SHOULD BE IN ONE SINGLE COLOR THAT’S COMPLEMENTARY TO THE COLOR OF THE MAIN ILLUSTRATION. Sub-rule: Any drop-shadow behind the logo, conversely, should be in a contrasting color. That would seem to be common sense, but you’d be aghast at how often it’s ignored.

3. LEAVE ROOM NOT ONLY FOR THE LOGO BUT FOR THE "TRADE DRESS," a.k.a. the company insignia, the issue number and month, and (God help us all) that dreaded barcode that began destroying American magazine covers before you were born and that I dream every day to someday see banished--but which, for now, remains a necessary, stinking, zebra-striped evil and I’m off-topic, aren’t I? Sorry. It’s just that, to this day, I still remember the very first comic I ever bought that had a barcode on it--Daredevil 130--and I’m still traumatized to this day. I thought it was gaudy and distracting back then, and my opinion hasn’t changed in the intervening 33 (!) years. I’d love to see barcodes banished, but in an understandable but still vomitous victory of commerce over art, most comics distributors insist that they be on the front cover or else they won’t handle your book. The advantage it gives them in computer inventory-management overrules the fact that it’s a nauseating blight. If you’re a big enough publisher, you can sneak a back-cover UPC every great once in a while, but since no advertiser is keen on having it interfere with back cover ads they’ve paid for, it’s generally not an option. Onward....

4. FLOP IT. Even if you think a cover sketch is a home run, and especially if you don’t, always turn it over and hold it up to the light so you can see what it looks like in mirror-image. A surprising number of times, it makes the mediocre good and the good better.

5. GIVE ME SOMETHING I CAN SEE FROM ACROSS THE ROOM. Bold colors. And/or white space. And/or stark illustrations. Simple is always, always better.

In the comments, if you please: your favorite comic or magazine covers.

Fuck You, Aliens

Yeah. Nice warp drive. Sweet AI. But can you make this?


Playing For Change | Song Around The World "Stand By Me" from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.

Didn't think so. Yeah, that's right. Get back on the ship.

(h/t Gizmodo)

Interview with Waid

Why, he's positively CHATTY over at AICN. The comics guys at AICN are really great, by the way, knowledgeable, with great taste -- it's genuinely one of my favorite, regular reads for reviews and interviews.

One Bag to Rule Them All ...

Still slightly stunned at the attention the link to The Pen Addict got, so I figure I'll send you to another specialty obsessive's center -- One Bag. I just did nine days in Portland out of a carry-on bag. Granted, I tend to cheat* and buy consumables like toothpaste, etc., once I arrive, but as a former professional traveller and current on-location monkey, I recommend the site heartily.

In the Comments I'd like to hear your travel tricks and favorite travel items, if you please ...








* I also buy some of my shirts online, much to the mocking of my friends. But these can take a beating and are great all-weather on-location clothes.

Old Standup

I'm actually a little terrified somebody found this. (Thanks, Richard.) '99 I think? Nah, got to be earlier, I'm pretty sure that's Montreal ... mid 90's. But there you go -- I had no idea this was online. Let's just say we all need to get used to the idea of our past, identity and privacy being a little more ... flexible in the 21st Century.

Jokes.com
John Rogers - Bridesmaids
dians.comedycentral.com
Joke of the Day Stand-Up Comedy Free Online Games

Faster Than the Mind's Eye

In this month's otherwise genially awful Wired our friendly Leverage crime consultant, Apollo Robbins, is name-checked in an article on neuroscience and magic by superstar brain dude Jonah Lehrer.

Research Thrills

Courtesy research for the Doomed Pulp Novel: You probably know this, but while they were building the New York Subway, some guys got sucked UP through the tunnel and blown out through the bottom of the East River. And lived. (And Curious Expeditions is a pretty cool blog)

One-Eyed Monster

Warning: Spoilers in trailer!



And still better than every SyFy Sytyrdy Myvy ever made. With the sole exception of Mammoth, of course.

Cutting Kane

He's enjoying that sawmill bit way too much.

DRUMMER Friday

by M A N



Billy Corgan and Frank Lenz
photo by Kateri Forbes


I'm taking a left turn this week to give a guy I know some much deserved props. Frank Lenz is not only a great drummer, but also one hell of decent human being. He just finished auditioning with Billy Corgan this week. You can read about the auditions over at the Smashing Pumpkins website.

You Vote

What's this the promo shot for: my fantasy GF reboot, or 21st century
Holmes & Watson?

Waid Wednesdays #1/2: See You Next Week

Here's this week's column of advice for writers and creative folk: spend the sixty lousy bucks on Quicken and be done with it. Don't just throw all your receipts and 1099s into a big drawer and expect to be able to neatly and effortlessly organize them on the morning of April 15, because you will instead spend that entire day sifting through a gigantic mound of paper and keening for the help of an unattentive God. And you will miss any deadlines you had that day. Like this one. Are you listening, Mark Waid of April 16, 2008? I thought not. You jerk.

Bread and Tea Bags

Quick reminder: today, all across America, thousands of people whose taxes will go down are marching and protesting the fact that my taxes will go up.

By 3 percentage points.

Memo to protesters: I'm okay with that, because I am not a selfish dick. I think I can survive the same crushing tax rates we had during the great economic apocalypse of the Clinton Years.

Go. Home.

(It's only going to get weirder.)

LEVERAGE 2: Hopefully, Aldis is the Last ...

My mom's beginning to get concerned at how I'm portrayed in these. I'm more concerned about the fact that since the actors are writing these, this is how they see me.

LEVERAGE 2: A Strangely Uneventful 2nd Act

John: Where's crafty?
Mark: On the Into the Wild bus.
John: What?



John: Wow, it is like the Into the Wild bus!
Mark: Exactly, except it's filled with snacks.
John: Which, admittedly, would change that movie a bit.
Mark: ... true.
John: "I will pit myself against nature with nothing more than my rifle a compass, and forty-eight pounds of Gummi Bears."

LEVERAGE 2: Welcome to Portland

Out along the river, two geese watch disapprovingly as we beat the hell out of Nate Ford in an abandoned factory.

First day of shooting in Portland. The city and crew are a dream. Seriously, there's a low-key vibe among the crew here -- no high drama, none of the nervous energy on most crews. The weather, on the other hand ... well, we have a saying in the writers' room: "Rain is cheap night." We got all that and more:



Rain to blinding sun to hail all within 45 minutes. Welcome to Portland. Although early hail impressed up on us God's personal grudge against our 1st AD, the weather inconvenienced us not a jot, and we move on --

What happened today? Sophie spoke with a sexy Cockney accent and decided if Nate Ford wound up in Boston Harbor or not. Nate Ford got beaten up by a guy who knew his dad. Parker got used to the earbuds again while seriously rocking the chick-in-a-suit-look, and Hardison yelled "If you want to live, get in!" while bullets sparked around him.

And, of course, Eliot Spencer indulged in his usual hobbies -- in this case at half speed, to break in new stunt-buddies.



Any unresolved questions from Season 1 in the Comments, I'll take a shot at them. For what it's worth, TNT has a Twitter feed, the show should soon have one, and we may well do a writers' room feed under the writers room tag or my name -- still deciding. But we're going to be much more aggressive this year about getting you the resources you need to have whatever conversation you're having on your site about the show.

PS: Fine, I'll bite. jonrog1 is the twitter channel, for my indulgences at least.

Cold Prey

by M A N



Don't let the horrible title or weak tag line fool you. This is a great little horror film. The premise is typical slasher fare and something we've all seen before (isolated snowboarding trip for beautiful teens goes horribly wrong), but the fun of the film is in the execution. It does take a little bit to get going and there are some pretty wooden translations, but once it's up and running, it doesn't disappoint. They even managed to take the telegraphed "reveal" at the end and twist it in an interesting way. Definitely worth a weekend rental.

The Case Against Universal Health Care

One of the pleasures of banging out a show like Leverage is that we hit at the exact same time the economic meltdown laid bare over-the-top executive-level corruption. (these aren't the story starters -- we're not L&O -- but simply examples):

How To Rob a Bank You Own - one of the plots of the 2nd season premiere
Corporations Testing drugs on children and, you know, maybe killing them. - Mile High Job & The Juror #6 Job
Insurance Company claims coverage is experimental and lets your kid die - The Nigerian Job
Contractors defrauding Katrina victims - The Snow Job
Corporate espionage - The Nigerian Job

Like we always say, we're not anti-corporation, we're anti-corrupt corporation. Just like Criminal Minds isn't anti-scraggly white dude, just anti-flesh-eating scraggly white dude. What's amazing is that as we amp things up for dramatic effect and embrace the idea that we're a pulp show -- reality has far, far surpassed us:

Guy fakes his death by JUMPING OUT OF A FRIKKIN' AIRPLANE.
Suit runs ten year $50 billion Ponzi scheme in full view of SEC.
Swiss financier smuggles diamonds in a tube of TOOTHPASTE.

Seriously, I can imagine the forum postings, the hoots of derision if we went for the toothpaste/diamond plot. I'm fairly sure you will see a house-arrest episode this year, however. I mean, for chrissake, the guy tried to mail $1 million in jewelry right out from under the noses of the Feds. Mail. In an envelope.

What I'm circling in on here is that our show Leverage depends on real-life social injustice as fuel for storylines and characters. We particularly depend on the broken health insurance model. Our protagonist, Nate Ford, lost a son to the "experimental treatment" dodge, sending him into his Robin Hood life of crime and functional alcoholism. Many of our victims are financially devastated by the perfidy of insurance companies, or crushed by health costs incurred as a result of other corporate misbehaviour. Redressing these sins, or scamming the bad guys to find the money to help these working-class victims rebuild their lives, is the driving force behind our show. And it's not just us: on Life a few weeks ago, a female coroner acted as an ccessroy to a crime solely so she wouldn't lose her health insurance while pregnant. Financial distress and criminal cover-up directly related to our broken health care system suffuse the American TV drama world.

Listen, fine, so 47 million Americans are uninsured and some 20 odd million Americans are under-insured, and 50% of all personal bankruptcies are caused by health costs, and 1.5 million families a year (a year) lose their homes because of health costs -- if you bring to America the same system of universal health care provided by every other Western nation at half the cost of our broken system -- all that suffering goes away. And as that suffering disappears, so do our plotlines.

Every TV show creates a hundred or so good union jobs, not to mention the downstream income and jobs created by the advertising, broadcast, and secondary distribution markets. Hollywood is one of the few American industries with an overall international trade surplus -- and much of its output is threatened by the current Administration's efforts to provide universal, affordable coverage to all Americans.

Granted, our recent lobbying to make sure the execs who brought about the current economic collapse escaped responsibility was startlingly effective. Without ruling-class villains there's no need for working-class heroes, and thank God that source of storylines remains intact. But this health insurance issue promises to be an even bigger threat. This is why we at Kung Fu Monkey are asking everyone who reads this blog to oppose all efforts to bring about universal health care to the US. Our misery-based fictions depend on it!