Films 2009!

I like lists of ‘movies of the year’ but I rarely get round to sorting out my own - mainly because I can never remember what I’ve seen. But now, thanks to the Empire Mag ‘movie list of the year’, I’ve done one! I’ve only seen 29 movies in 2009! That’s not many is it!? But it means that I can give you a full 30 rundown, with commentary where I can be bothered lol
29 - The Spirit: 10 minutes in, I realised this movie wasn’t going to get any better. In fact I realised the same godawful look and tone was going to continue for the next two hours. And it did. Awful. Frank Miller, please stick to comics (well actually, judging from your last few comics, don’t bother with that either).
28 - District 9: I’m sorry, I know I’m in the minority (so to speak), but I just couldn’t stand this film. It’s good that it was innovative and the story was lively and fairly unpredictable, but I just couldn’t take to it. It was all too brown-looking, I didn’t understand why the aliens were called ‘prawns’, the main guy irritated me, it never felt like there were millions of ‘prawns’ in the camp, and I just didn’t understand why the ‘prawns’ couldn’t just stay on the ship.
27 - 2012: Stupid, annoying, insulting, imbecilic. John Cusack’s idiotic face. Lowest point: realising John’s son was called ‘Noah’ as the survivors are about to get on the ‘Arks’. My jaw dropped. Plus, would people’s mobile phones be working in a huge disaster like this? Especially when a tsunami is heading right towards Jimmy Mistry…
26 - Knowing: I didn’t hate this as much as most people, but I didn’t like the gratuitousness of the plane crash and subway disaster. Nasty.
25 - Haunting in Conneticut: Meh…
24 - Milk: It had some really nice, human moments, a few great characters in there, and the ending was affecting, but it was so sloooowwwwwwww.
23 - Outlander: Hmm…
22 - The Good The Bad and The Weird - However much I love ‘The Bad’ guy, this was just too long and uninvolving.
21 - Whiteout: Just completely uninteresting… The only good bit about this film was that I saw it in an empty movie room with my chum Marcus, which meant we could lark around and try different seats and also complain about the aircon being too cold.
20 - Blood: Meh… Reeeally bad CGI!!! Honestly, must do better! Couldn’t they see how crap it was?? I felt awful for the Blood guys tho when they’d make Blood annoucements on Facebook, and everyone would just slate the movie. Ouch.
19 - Terminator Salvation: Oh dear… I actually edited the official movie magazine for this film… I’d read the script and feared there wasn’t much to it… And I wasn’t far wrong. Some of the cinematography was good and some of the characters showed promise - and I’m glad they kept a lot of Helena Bonham Carter in it (the script seemed to change every five minutes) , and the Arnie bit was good, but …it felt a bit lacklustre. It also didn’t help that I had gone on a really weird diet that week, and my blood sugar decided to crash during the movie making me go all feverish and what-not, so it wasn’t a pleasant experience!!!
18 - Funuke: One of the Japanese movies I saw with my lovely Japanese classmates. This was okay - a bit drawn out, and it was set in the Japanese countryside which was gooorgeous…
17 - Push: Hmm nothing special… but nice to see Hong Kong…
16 - The Proposal: Sweet…
15 - Zombieland: Hmm… meh… The girls were annoying…
14 - Bruno: Kind of funny, very shocking… Had a very entertaining lesbian in front of me at the cinema providing really stupid, but funny, commentary. “He’s fallen out the window bwa ha ha”.
13 - Wolverine: Origins: Not as bad as everyone seemed to say, but I didn’t really understand why they had to dick around with the comics mythology so much.
12 - GI Joe: Well it was really really stupid, but it did entertain me. Honestly though, that ‘clever plot point’ where they come up with a Celtic phrase to make the Scottish guy’s plane work - ouuuch. Storm Shadow was very sexy though.
11 - Paranormal Activity: Well it kept me entertained and hiding behind cushions, but there wasn’t really much to it.
10 - Thirst - Korean films are getting an excellent reputation (well-deserved), although I think they need to be careful on the lengthiness and quirky factor. Thirst didn’t grab me as much as previous Korean movies, but was worth it for the final 10 minutes alone. The cinema I saw it at actually showed the movie reels in the wrong order (trainee projectionist, apparently), but I just thought it was part of the quirky factor… I still managed to follow it though.
9 - Watchmen: First time I saw it, I felt it was too violent and depressing. It grew on me more the 2nd time though. Fab opening sequence… I liked Silk Spectre, and Rorshach was amazing.
8 - Inglorious Basterds: Very dark and disturbing, but clever and entertaining. Not one of my fave QTs, but still got it on DVD.
7 - Gran Torino: Sob…
6 - Slumdog Millionaire: Weep…
5 - Let the Right One In: Just such an amazing ‘feel’ to it. And that final scene in the swimming pool - wow.
4 - Benjamin Button: Spellbinding…
3 - Star Trek: Just so entertaining - a *good* blockbuster (yeah, it’s possible, Mr 2012). Had me laughing, had me crying, and I loved the whole crew and their hopefulness and optimisim - it just came across in waves. Nice to see Sulu actually get something to do too!
2 - Departures: A Japanese movie about a guy who joins a funeral company. It’s just so gentle and moving. I had tears rolling down my cheeks.
1 - Tokyo Sonata: Such a simple movie - about a dysfunctional family - but it works so well. So well acted, so moving, so engaging. Again, had me in tears. Wonderful.

On another note, I think my real favourite film this year was an old one that I just happened to catch on DVD. A Bittersweet Life - so good.

No more Twitter!

It’s been in the news lately how Lily Allen has dumped her Blackberry and Ipod (not sure why her Ipod…) and left Facebook and Twitter, as she felt they were taking over. Now I can’t live without my Ipod (and shouldn’t have to!!) and I’m verging on being addicted to Facebook (I do think Facebook is great and a cool way of having fun with mates, and I’m frustrated that some of my closest mates aren’t on there)…but Twitter…
What a waste of time! I just can’t see the point. It’s been on my Ipod Touch and has it enriched my life in any way? No. It just seems to be full of people bragging on about their lives. And each time I turn my Ipod on, there’s about 130 ‘Tweets’ to catch up on! It’s stressful, man! So I’ve taken it off my Ipod. I won’t delete my account, cos I’m on there as Spandex, but I doubt I’ll be on there much.
One other thing - I think people need to think about what they are ‘Tweeting’. It was in the news how one woman was ‘Tweeting’ about how her child was drowning (he died…). A music guy died last week, and that’s all Kristen Hersh has been Tweeting about - depressing, and inappropriate. And people Tweeting tributes to Britney Murphey. Guys, if I get run over tomorrow, please don’t ‘Tweet’ about my death…

The end was nigh

2012. Well what a load of shit. Honestly, it's a crime against humanity. It's so brain-numbingly bad that I think I suffered brain damage. It's so unbelievably stupid, I'm just in shock.
What were they thinking? California is destroyed - what a horrible thing to see - and they just make it look like a video game. It's the end of the world - let's have John Cusack go 'woooah' and get into all sorts of silly scrapes. and what's up with his face? His goldfish mouth and mascara eyes? And some of the characters - yeesh. John Billingsley - awful in everything he does. 'Gordon' the new hubby - okay, so someone wants you to help fly the only plane in the area, you don't go 'I can't fly, I can't fly'. Idiot. No one seems to be bothered when he is minced to death.
In fact all the survivors were utterly cretinous. If i survived the end of the world I think I'd kill myself. Well actually I'd kill Jabba the Russian and his awful fat Katie Melua kids first.
I was just laughing so much in most of this film. "Oh there's the Queen" said my cinema buddy, as my attention had drifted. There indeed was the Queen with her Corgis. And as the survivors get onto the 'Arcs' I suddenly realise the hero's son is called Noah. Dear God.
What a waste of millions of dollars. A film that embodies what everyone hates about Hollywood.

Almost getting back to normal now...

Thank goodness, things seem to be calming down!!!
Just one radio interview this week, a couple of website interviews, still a bit of Spandex press going on and website stuff, but I can handle it now I think. I think I 'hit the ground falling' last week lol. I didn't know if I was coming or going.
Some of the negative comments about Spandex really got to me - but I just have to really focus on the positives, and some people have been really positive. Rich Johnston very kindly invited me to join his lovely Thanksgiving preview project on Bleeding Cool, so I posted a pic from issue two (http://www.bleedingcool.com/2009/11/27/thanks-given-33-spandex-second-issue/) - altho immediately got a 'he draws like a 10-year-old!' comment (rolls eyes).
So yeah, just the odd wacky email here and there. Someone told me my use of the word transvestite was 'offensive'. Can't win really - my friend said to me that even if I made a comic about a fluffy bunny making friends with a cute toad, the internet-haterz would still try to knock it down.
So yep, hopefully things will calm down. I have ordered a second printing of Spandex which should hopefully be with me on Tuesday - which is good as I have about 400 orders to send out, and people are starting to get annoyed with me I think!!!
So yes, I am going to do an issue two, aiming for Jan or Feb, but fully aware that it's going to be a lot of work. I just tweaked the script this weekend and I think it's a doozy, a lot of fun. Better crack on!

Criticism

Man, this is hard...
From the very start, I swore I would avoid reading stuff online about Spandex, but I looked at a few things today... And however many wonderful messages I've had from people, the nasty stuff really sticks. Nasty stuff by people who haven't even read Spandex yet.
I'm so bored of this 'first gay superteam' stuff now. People keep throwing gay comic team book titles at me - but all I'm seeing are gay duos (that's just not a team), very adult stuff (not my aim with this), and Rich Johnston just showed me Prism High - but isn't that a high school thing? I feel that some people are just being picky.
My point of view is that when I read Previews each month, I haven't seen a gay superteam comic - and I've been looking at it for months, years. Of course, there are indie comics out there that have covered all sorts of subjects, but my brain isn't an indie comic encyclopedia. There are 1000s of comics out there, what do the cynical people want me to do, leaf thru every comic shop's indie section before I dare release Spandex?
I just can't understand how some people can react so negatively to a comic they haven't read.
And I was looking at this today, and it started off so nicely, but at the end it turns out that the guy is offended by Spandex (just from looking at the Metro piece).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJMM0SeYfbU&feature=player_embedded
I read through some of the comments beneath it, and thank god, some people GET IT (that I'm playing with cliches to have fun with them, not make fun of them), but it's so frustrating that some people don't. Comments about the art, and how I can't draw sequential art - how can you tell that from one panel showing a team shot, which is all that's shown in the Metro? Did I ever claim I was an amazing artist? I wish I was. Did I expect Spandex to create such a media storm? Of course I didn't - I expected to get about 50 readers. Did I expect any of this? No I didn't.
There's a comment about my reference to transvestite Liberty as 'he/she' and that that's not right and that I don't understand. But isn't that person categorising transvestites, dictating how they should be - isn't everyone different? How do people know what I am trying to achieve with Liberty? Am I supposed to be making her a character formed from the opinions of other people, a representative, or can I go ahead with the character I've forged with a great deal of care, love and attention? I just wish some of the negative people would think about what they are saying.
And of course I allow myself to get riled and say negative stuff about Rich Johnston on a web-page aargh!
I've had enough - no more comment-reading for me, I'm just not going to get involved in never-ending narguments, and I shouldn't have got involved in the first place.
I just wish the negative people could see what I'm trying to see what I'm doing with Spandex - to explore the lives of gay people and show them in a natural manner (apart from the powers of course!). It's as simple as that. I had no idea that this would open such a massive can of worms - in many ways - and maybe I was naive. All I'll say is that Spandex is a labour of love for me, it comes from a very caring place, and I feel that I'm being made - by a vocal minority - to apologise for that.

A week in the life of Spandex

So then, you might just have heard what happened this week with Spandex. It’s been an incredible week! It hit the Sun website, the Metro newspaper, and then it went on to reach several more newspapers, and the story (the world’s ‘first gay superteam’) has hit websites all around the world - Russia, Spain, Argentina, Australia… It’s been absolutely incredible! An absolute dream come true, but also in some ways, quite daunting and scary.
A lot of people have been asking me ‘how did you do it?’ and so I thought I’d try to document exactly what happened, because it’s fairly interesting, I think. It’s certainly been a massive learning curve for me.
So anyway, after a full year finishing Issue One, Spandex is finally ready to get printed (this is in October). It’s an absolute experiment for me. It’s 40 pages, full colour, so not cheap to produce (although I did get a good deal on it) and to be honest, I just want to get it into people’s hands now, so I dipped into my savings and never really expected or even cared about earning back the money I spent on it. I just wanted to gauge reactions and give copies to the people who have helped me in its creation, so I see the 350-odd quid I spend on printing as a one-time only indulgence. I think I earned it.
I start the ‘distribution’ and so far, so good, a pretty nice reaction, generally very positive, and I also set about finishing the Spandex website, including setting up Paypal links etc. I also do a comic show, the Comiket, and the reaction is great - people like the colourful new comic (including kids - oops, it’s too adult for them) and I’m really grateful to Paul Gravett for plugging its launch in the Comiket flyer.
Then I start putting a press release together, which is basically a 9-page PDF full of lots of artwork, blurb and selling points. I send it out to 3 or 4 UK gay mags, including Diva, and Diva is the only publication that replies - the Editor seems quite into it, and asks for a copy.
And this is where everything changed. I’m looking at Digital Spy and I can’t find a contact for love nor money, so I ask my friend, who is in Marketing, if he knows a contact at DS. He asks me why, so I explain, and he says ‘Mart, I know loads of people, let’s do this together’. We’re both busy, so this takes over a week to get organised, but it involves a very important pub chat where we go over my press release. It’s all wrong - you can’t send a PDF press release, because how are people supposed to grab images from it? My Marketing chum then talks me through some pretty obvious changes that need to be made, plus additions, including adding a page at the end, ‘For Editorial Information’, which is basically a character breakdown. You really have to just tell journalists what the selling points are and make their lives easier and just send some jpegs. So that’s done, and I select the images to send out. We also set up a separate email address for Spandex that we can both access.
Monday 16 November comes along, and I’ve got a day off work (it's new Tori Amos album day ;-D. My mate sends the press release out and I’m at home drawing. 5pm, My Marketing mate calls me and says ‘Mart, the Metro have emailed, they want to interview you!’ I’m sitting there relaxing, and he tells me to get this interview done as soon as possible so I can hit tomorrow’s paper. He coaches me a bit on what I should say and what I should avoid saying. With his push, I really nail the answers, but it’s too late to get into the paper anyway.
Tuesday 17 Nov, I’m back at work. Things go crazy. My MM calls me and says ‘Mart, you’re on the homepage of The Sun’s website’. He’s in shock, I later find out that he’s only ever been involved with a couple of Marketing campaigns that have had this kind of coverage. I get a call from BBC Radio Sussex, they want to interview me. A local Brighton news team want to interview me too. I’m at work!! What do you do?? Luckily my boss is happy for me to ‘make up the time’. I head out at 11am for the Radio interview at BBC Centre near Oxford Street (I see Vanessa Feltz and Colin Murray on the way). Radio and TV interviews are completely out of my comfort zone but I’m willing to give it a go, plus I love talking about my comic. I get to the place and the secretary dumps me in a room on my own with a microphone and headphones (the DJ is in Brighton). She goes out for lunch and leaves me completely on my own! Eventually, ’Danny Pike’ comes on the headphones and the interview goes well - I think I made him laugh. I get the cliched surge of adrenaline when I'm being interviewed, and all worries die away. All through the interview, I’m stuffing Spandex into envelopes - I’m getting a lot of orders online…
Rush back to work, and immediately go into the TV interview for Brighton local news. It goes well, and the camera-man is really into comics so I make sure he gets a couple of freebies from the office. I don't see the final interview and I don't hear the radio one either - I don't like seeing or hearing myself on TV or radio, but my mates hear the radio one on i-player and say it's good.
Luckily the interviews then go quiet, but I get several requests from websites for imagery (this evolves as a panicked scramble on my work machine to find the good stuff - until over the week I get a good folder of pics that I’m happy with - although most people tend to only use the stock images anyway - the giant lesbian pic, the team shot, etc). Comments on the Sun page vary from ‘this looks lovely’ to ‘he draws like a 4 year old’ (‘I had been aiming for a 3 year old’ was my comeback, and a joke I made on the radio earlier). The negative comments do weigh heavily, and it’s easy to forget how lovely everyone else is.
In the meantime, the orders are coming through thick and fast, and I’m starting to worry about the amount of copies I’ve got, and the amount of time I have to send these out.
Wednesday 18 Nov. I’m in bed at 7am, and my best mate calls me - Spandex is on page 3 of The Metro newspaper (one of London’s biggest free morning newspapers). Several other friends text and phone. Me and my Marketing guy are in shock. The orders for Spandex increase. The Daily Star calls me for an interview which goes well, but I don’t think they run it.
But for me, The Metro is a dream come true. I’ve lost track of the amount of times I’ve seen features on the death of Cap America, or Batwoman being a lesbian, and I’ve thought, ‘sigh, I’d love for my comics to get some kind of attention’. Whatever happens from here-on in, I think it’s safe to say that a dream has definitely come true.
In the meantime, I am really struggling at work. The Spandex orders are coming in thick and fast, and my copies are running dangerously low, shops are asking for copies, and I also have to make sure I have enough copies for the Thought Bubble convention in Leeds at the weekend.
I also discover a couple of financial things. First up, I had NO idea (yes I’m stupid) that Paypal took a fee from your earnings, which mounts up to about 10% of each copy. It doesn’t sound like much, but it all mounts up, so I have to start thinking about increasing the price slightly so that I’m not losing out here. Things have certainly moved on from The O Men days, where I’d maybe get about 30 or 40 orders and I’d pay for all the postage myself. I’ve got to be very careful. I also have to really think about the US postage. Initially I have it at $4, which is just ridiculous. To ‘break even’ on an issue, I have to make about half the cover price, then there’s Paypal’s fee, and post to the US costs a couple of quid, so I set the price at $7.50 to make sure that I am covering my costs. Imagine if I’d left the price at $4 and then had hundreds of orders. I’d have lost out massively, and pretty much lost all my savings - disaster. I want to go to Japan next year, and the thought of losing all my money for that because of a silly mistake is awful. One good thing is that people are buying the PDF of the comic where no paper product/printing is involved.
In the meantime, things are really manic. I’m trying to do my full time job, but I’m also trying to keep on top of orders - especially for the PDFs - and I’m making sure I’m monitoring press emails. My mind is a bit of a whirl, and to be honest, I’m finding it very hard to focus on my job (it doesn’t help that I’m not sleeping, waking up at 4am, cos I’m so wired). At work, I’m having a vague idea that I have meetings, I just don’t seem able to focus on emails etc, so I just make sure I keep asking my boss when the meetings are (although I manage to be half an hour late for one...). I also feel a bit isolated from my mates and start to miss them, as I’ve lost my regular email contact with them.
In all this, I am actually surprised a publisher or an agent hasn’t got in touch. Maybe they think I’m all professionally set up. Nothing could be further from the truth! It's just me doing it all and I have been really struggling.
What else happens, let me think... I do a string of interviews for a variety of people, including people doing dissertations, a very cool guy off the Wired blog and more. In the meantime, I’m getting a lot of nice comments on my website. People just seem generally ecstatic about the whole gay super team situation. One Russian guy asks for some images so I send them to him and get the following message - ‘you have become a real media hero in recent days’. I mean, what can you say to that?
Friday 20 Nov, things are starting to quieten down, media-wise, thank goodness. I am gearing up for a 2nd printing of Spandex and sort out my quotes. I’m not happy with the situation though - I have about 300 orders to process, only 70 copies left, and the 2nd printing won’t be ready for a few days, which means people won’t get Spandex for at least a week. I’m worried that people will get pissed off with me, and in the meantime I’m also pretty much seeing at least one order come thru on Paypal every half hour. Crazy and daunting! A lot of the people who have ordered Spandex are a mainstream audience, they don’t understand the ramshackle world of independent comments, and one unnoticed negative comment on my Facebook page could do a lot of damage.
I decide to go thru with going to Thought Bubble - I had been in two minds because a) I am exhausted and b) I have so few copies of Spandex left. I'm frightened to leave my emails for a couple of days, but what the hell. Thought Bubble is a success though. Sales are steady, and I do come back with a few copies, which is good, as I can fulfill a few Paypal orders. The best thing about doing a comic con like Thought Bubble is that you can really gauge the reaction of people and see what they like and don’t like. For instance, the ‘Attack of the 50 Foot Lesbian’ picture is very popular and makes people laugh, Glitter is popular with the younger kids and about 60% of the audience is female. I thoroughly enjoy talking to everyone, including some mature lesbian women, some giggly teens and some generally ecstatic people. I’m also incredibly appreciative of the straight male guys who bought a copy off me - it just goes to show how things have moved on. They don’t care about any possible ‘stigma’ there might be involved in buying a gay comic. Each and every person I met in Leeds at the con truly touched my heart.
So now, I’m back at home. I have maybe 40 copies of issue one left, so I can do a mini mailout before I get the 2nd printing, but in the meantime I can write all the envelopes out in preparation. Finally after a mad week, things have calmed down, and I can start to get on top of things. I have taken a couple of days off work to ‘re-group’ and I have an interview with Radio Dublin on Monday.
I’m also thinking about pitching it as a TV show, and I’m also seriously thinking about doing an Issue Two…

Oops

Um, I seem to have lost my own copy of Spandex - the one I intended to keep for reference. I hope I haven't given it to someone or sent it to someone by mistake! If I did, just let me know - it's a bit ripped up and there's a gold star on the cover!! D'oh!