Tuesday News Day

All comics are cross-posted on the website www.poorlydrawnshark.com, just launched by my friend Dave Moss. I'm not sure when they go live, as I'm alternating weeks, but this is going to be my new regularly updated project for awhile - a comic every other week. You'll notice that most of them star Corey Hudson and myself.



I hope you enjoy them - I'll be posting a round-up of comics already released (most of them already on this blog) and a round-up of my favorite Elephant Words pieces I finished. I wrote on the site for a year, and have over 52 short stories, some of which I'm really proud of.

Never Google These Terms

Click to the immediate right of the panel to advance.

Those of you who don't get this are the lucky ones. The rest of us envy the dead.

Mirror's Edge

I'm running through an office building, frantically pounding up the staircase. I burst out of the fire exit only door, labeled to discourage its use, and as my eyes adjust to the overwhelming brightness that is the sky that high up, I see a man with a gun. He's already drawn it and it's pointed at me, and he's close enough he won't miss.

I can hear my heart beating in my ears, and I act out of instinct, pushing him backwards over the railing. We're at least 15 stories up.

This incident happens in the first third of Mirror's Edge, and is not a scripted event. Unable to control my panic, I send a man, likely one who has a family, and is working a low-wage security job to buy medicine for them as news reports on every screen trumpet the arrival of a new strain of bird flu to the city, to his death. From then on, I am haunted.

Mirror's Edge plays like a first-person shooter, but may be the first game in that genre (if it is even in that genre, as it plays more like a platformer wearing an FPS skin) that not only allows, but encourages you to be a pacifist. You don't start equipped with a gun. If you want one, you can get up close and personal with somebody aiming one at your face and take it from them. Naturally, this is dangerous, not to mention time-consuming, both liable to get you killed in a world that you need to keep moving through at breakneck speed. Even if you do take a weapon, pointing and firing costs precious seconds, and it's often best to just throw it away.

How many other games depend on you taking weapons away from people and then not using them? Aside from sports games, which are still all about domination, since when has a game not required murder? Since when has escape and freedom been such a crucial part of play?

I resolve at that moment not to kill anyone else for the rest of the game. It makes the game more difficult at times, easier at others, but it forces me to consider every action. In Call of Duty, I don't even track my ammo, spraying it at enemies without any consideration of what it's doing. Rainbow Six Vegas forces me to conserve my ammo, and stands apart from the crowd as less a war-game and more an accurate simulation of the horrors of being shot by small pieces of metal traveling at high velocities. Both of them still require murder. Even Mario demands I headstomp Goombas.

Non-puzzle games aside, what other games have you seen this trend in? Is the idea of domination so entrenched in the concept of play that this is almost a fluke? Does that explain the low-sales on one of the most innovative and challenging games of last year?

The Aftermath

Learned a valuable lesson about using an image URL that's locked behind a specific account on a website. Apologies to everybody who saw a broken photo.

Click for larger rendering of the time LeDonne and I killed and ate two peace-loving crustaceans.

Comic-Con Roundup

Hey gang, drove down to San Diego this weekend for Comic-Con cause I have excellent friends who hooked me up with a professional's badge. While I just did Saturday (I had work Friday, and promised not one, but two ladies drinks on Sunday) I had an excellent time and met a lot of great people.

For some reason, I have a strange fear of talking to comics celebrities. This is not the case with what most people would consider "real" celebrities. When working in NYC, I hung out with Patton Oswalt and Newsradio creator Paul Simms for an hour backstage at an event, and it was awesome. We chatted hardcore videogames and comics the whole time, and I felt at home. Faced with the prospect of talking to an artist or comics writer, however, I turn into a quivering pile of jelly.

I think part of this stems from the idea I can reconcile in my head that a normal celebrity is one of many facets going into creating a product, and there are many just as important people you never see, and while there are invisible important people in comics, the majority of the work is done by one or two person teams. This incredible amount of output is staggering and intimidating.

I overcame this fear today, thanks in part to the overall Canadian charm of Jeff Lemire, who just released The Nobody through Vertigo and has a really unique looking series, Sweet tooth coming out in September. I had a virgin sketchbook I bought back before NYCC 2008 and never used, and opened it up in front of him.

"Sorry to ask you to be uncharacteristic, but I want you to draw the happiest thing you can think of," I said, reassuring myself I didn't sound like the fan currently harping Jill Thompson one seat over, laughing a chattering Salacious Crumb laugh at everything that came out of her mouth. While that pony-tailed fan began to tell her it was so cool she was in The Invisibles (as a character model for Ragged Robin) and lamented how the mainstream "just doesn't get Grant Morrison yet, but they will," Jeff had sketched this totally awesome portrait of the main character from The Nobody for me:



He says he's smiling under the bandages, we just can't see. The thought balloon was to clear up any confusion.

The yes-man in front of Jill (who won an Eisner last night, congratulations!) had disappeared, and I asked her to repeat the experiment, drawing the happiest thing she could think of. She immediately set to work, obviously having spent most of the day wishing she could witness this:




Finally, I wandered over to the Image booth and found a man speaking in a British accent that wasn't put on with a Doctor Who outfit that morning. Kieron Gillen, author of Phonogram, was manning his corner of the world with brave support from a friend. I purchased the trade of Phonogram (since I refuse to loan the singles to people anymore) which Kieron offered to sign just as Jamie McKelvie showed up. I knew it was him immediately. Part of it was the way he sat in the chair labeled "Jamie McKelvie" but a large bit was also the fact that he looks like he drew himself. I mean that as a compliment, to both him and his art.

Jamie was doing sketches for $20 and I knew this would be money well-spent. I asked him to draw whatever he thought was the happiest thing in the world. Thus began a nice twenty-minute brainstorming session about what would make Jamie happy. He decided a sleeping Jamie would be boring, and a big pile of money was too easy a sketch. As Kieron and I talked about Phonogram and comics and his upcoming projects (they're all NDA, so I learned nothing beyond, "They exist. My girlfriend quite likes one of them.") Jamie settled upon an idea. He began sketching while glancing up at the two of us deep in our discussion.

Jamie was exceedingly proud of his work:



Jamie apologized for turning my sketchbook into his power-fantasy and told me to have the sketch for free, but it's one of my favorite sketches ever!

Kieron asked me to post it on the internet so if he ends up dead of an axe wound, we'll have an evidence trail this was pre-meditated. There's a picture of me, the sketch and Kieron, but it's on Jamie's iPhone, so I can only hope it turns up on the interwebs. Jamie?

I also got a signed copy of Scalped Volume 1, because I thought Andrew Adams stole my copy... and I'm always looking for an excuse to throw money at Jason Aaron as a way of saying, "Thank you for creating Scalped. It is the greatest thing mankind has achieved."



In additon to all that, I handed out a bunch of Reed Gunther stuff! As you may or may not know, Reed Gunther is written by my good friend Shane, and drawn by his brother Chris. It's a cowboy riding a bear. That's a high-concept logline Michael Bay would and has killed for.

One of those Reed Gunther books went to Jamie McKelvie as a thanks for the sketch, and a few more found their ways into the hands of people I thought would get a kick out of them, including a ten-year old. I wasn't being nice, I was building the marketbase! That kid's gonna want issue #2, and Shane'll be there to sell it to them! I'm so glad D.A.R.E. taught me how a successful business operates!

Thanks to Reed Gunther, I got to meet Pascal Campion, and realized that he should be fighting crime. I imagine he could walk up to a robbery in progress and hand them this print at which point they'd stop and apologize:



All in all an excellent trip - Lots of fun, and now lots of sleeping.

Fact: You Are Amazing

I just wanted to say thank you to everybody who contributed to the classroom projects at donorschoose.org over the past week. Together, with me matching your donations, we raised $190 for several classrooms - three of which completed their funding at your hands! Two of those were looking for video cameras to allow students to learn film production and help them on writing assignments. Another classroom got a document projector to assist students in visual learning!

THANK YOU LETTERS FROM THE TEACHERS:

"A huge thanks to all of you for donating to this project. Because of your generosity my students will continue to grow into better and more excited writers. Seeing and hearing their excitement when I let them know the great news was amazing. They are already thinking of their next great idea to write about. Again, please know how much I appreciate your support of my students and their writing success."

"Thank you for your generous support and contributions to our student-produced television project! The camera and media that your donations provide will be used by a group of students who have shown tremendous initiative and creativity-- they've already produced several short videos using low-resolution cameras, and I'm very excited to see the work they'll do with this upgraded equipment.

These students took it upon themselves to form an extracurricular group, meeting after school to shoot, edit and assemble their videos. In a low-income, urban setting like ours, the importance of extra-curricular activities cannot be stressed enough. With your support, these students will be able to take a project they love, which they created, to the next level.

With gratitude,
Mr. K."

"Thank you all so much for your donations. Because of your generosity, my classroom will now be equipped with a document camera. My students will greatly benefit from this. Having a document camera in our classroom will allow me to project anything from worksheets, to 3-D objects, to a computer screen. This will allow me to turn anything into a large visual aid. Since most of my students are visual learners, a document camera is a necessary tool for their learning.

My students and I are extremely grateful and excited! I appreciate the support that you have all shown in my students' learning and in their futures. Great things are being done through Donors Choose, and this is just one of them.

With gratitude,
Ms. L."

Again, thank you to those who donated or passed on the link or emailed people. You can still donate at Donors Choose but my finances are tapped out for the foreseeable future, so I can't match donations anymore (they're tax-deductible, by the way, in case that motivates you!). I've been sleeping on the floor for five months, and am going to buy a bed with my next paycheck, because my back is finally starting to complain.

These guys need $140 more to realize their goals. If you can give even a dollar, I would adore you forever.

Most Important Thing I've Ever Written

MORE UPDATES!
UPDATE: You guys cleared out this entire charity's needs in less than four hours. I was going to match and donate after dinner, but the donations are now closed for this particular charity. Here's what we're going to do: At the time I made the offer to match donations, they needed $190. If we were going to fill that together, you needed to donate $95, and I would match $95. Since I didn't get my opportunity to donate, BECAUSE YOU GUYS ARE WAY TOO AMAZING, I'll be matching donations until I hit the $95 dollar limit for ANY classroom project you choose on the donorschoose website. I'll be posting updates on here, Facebook and Twitter (username: thoughtmecca) as to each classroom I donate to, and a countdown of what's left to donate.

Here's the list of classrooms you can choose from: You can search by amount needed to complete, region, subject, or grade level. Once you make your donation, forward me your receipt at: donations@matthartwell.com.

If you were to choose something media-based, as my original donation was, I'd be thrilled, and you can read my reasons for that below, but I will match any donation in any subject until I hit that $95 mark. If you guys keep donating after that, keep forwarding me your email addresses and the reason you chose the classroom you did, and I will post it here, to spread awareness of the project's you've chosen.

Donate $5 instead of eating out tonight! - Dave Metzger: Donation to Students "FLIP" For Writing!
This way you can't spend that money on beer. - Carly Bales: Donation to Student-Made Televison!
Joanne Hartwell: Projected Success!

Amount remaining for me to donate: $38

Taking a cue from John Rogers: If you like what you read here and on Elephant Words, donate to support a cause I believe in, and if you loathe it and everything I stand for, donations are a great way to bankrupt this kid out of $95.

ORIGINAL POST AS FOLLOWS:

Hey everybody,

I'm a recent college graduate just starting to work in Hollywood, and it's pretty awesome. I wouldn't be here, however, if I hadn't had an early exposure to film and television production. Most of this I received at the hands of truly dedicated teachers, as well as a slew of opportunities from my parents. The children at William Perry Elementary don't have these same opportunities. They attend school in a High Poverty area, and almost all of the students are dependent on the free lunch program just to ensure they receive adequate nutrition. While some people may scoff at the idea of donating video cameras as charity, I implore you not to pass up this chance to help shape a child's future. They will never be able to afford SR1 cameras or Final Cut Pro editing software, much less the computers to run it on, but a pair of FLIP camcorders, in addition to being perfectly rugged for their age group, allows anybody to learn the art of filmmaking. If even ONE child has a spark of creativity ignited because of the projects they use these cameras for, then it will be worth it. Because I believe so much in this, I am going to ask you to forward your receipt to me, and I will match any donations you make, dollar for dollar until their goal is met.

Click this link to donate and for further information!

Thank you for your time,
Matthew Hartwell
donations@matthartwell.com