Iconic comic book illustrator Rob Liefeld, aka the Man who Never Ages, and celebrated cartoonist Ty Templeton starred in this enlightening episode of the Canadian TV show The Anti Gravity Room from 1996, which shows what it takes to put together a comic book.
If you’ve ever wondered how a comic book goes from script to store shelf, this ugly VHS rip will fill you in on the particulars, and offers some pretty sweet insight into how much work goes into creating comics.
Aspiring writers know how it is -those rejection slips just keep piling up. It can be discouraging. But that doesn’t necessarily mean your book is bad. Some of the biggest selling books ever were published only after a string of rejections. Even Anne Frank’s diary was rejected -sixteen times!
These days, Anne Frank has one of the best-known holocaust stories and the book has sold 30 million copies around the world. Surprisingly, the tale wasn’t too popular with publishers though, and was rejected sixteen times. One publisher even noted the story was barely worth reading because, “The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the ‘curiosity’ level.”
Read about other bestselling books that overcame initial publisher’s rejection at Flavorwire. Link
Here’s a law that strikes home here at Neatorama. There have been times when I’ve proofread, edited, and corrected the same thing ten times, but somehow a typo appears in the published version. I blame extraterrestrials. John Bangsund of the Victorian Society of Editors coined the term Muphry’s Law in 2003. It states:
1. if you write anything criticising editing or proofreading, there will be a fault in what you have written;
2. if an author thanks you in a book for your editing or proofreading, there will be mistakes in the book;
3. the stronger the sentiment in (a) and (b), the greater the fault; and
4. any book devoted to editing or style will be internally inconsistent
The law also goes on to state how readers will see these errors instantly. Link -via Boing Boing
Many cities and urban centers these days are discovering the increasing problem of figuring out what to do abandoned buildings and structures. As populations and industries change many large factories, apartment complexes and even theme parks are left as empty rusting hunks of man-made waste. One publishing company is trying to brainstorm a solution in an upcoming book.
The concept is the brainchild of Gregory Crawford, who recently launched a Kickstarter project in a bid to fund his book, Fall Apart Park, and a publishing company called The Afterwords Archive. The project will offer creative transformation proposals for abandoned buildings and places, through a combination of fiction, non-fiction, journalism and photo-essays, while adopting re-purposed materials.
Printing a book was different in 1947. The process required quite a few skilled workers performing tasks you won’t see anymore, outside of historical videos like this. Contrast this process with a more modern method of publishing. -via Metafilter
Lately, I’ve been trying to get an essay published in a scholarly journal. Maybe I have a chance with this one! The Journal of Universal Rejection, hosted by Pacific University, offers a timely response and permits simultaneous submissions. Editor Caleb Emmons writes of the advantages of his publication:
You can send your manuscript here without suffering waves of anxiety regarding the eventual fate of your submission. You know with 100% certainty that it will not be accepted for publication.
There are no page-fees.
You may claim to have submitted to the most prestigious journal (judged by acceptance rate).
The JofUR is one-of-a-kind. Merely submitting work to it may be considered a badge of honor.
You retain complete rights to your work, and are free to resubmit to other journals even before our review process is complete.
Decisions are often (though not always) rendered within hours of submission.
Mad magazine has a place in American pop culture as one of the most successful humor magazines ever published. It’s also great bathroom reading. Here’s a brief history.
BACKGROUND
In 1947 Max Gaines, owner of Educational Comics (which published biblical, scientific, and historical comic books), was killed in a boating accident. He left the business to his 25-year-old son, William, a university student.
The younger Gaines renamed the company Entertainment Comics (EC) and got rid of the stodgy educational stuff. Instead, he started publishing more profitable crime, suspense, and horror comics like Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horrors, and House of Fear.
THE BIRTH OF MAD
Gaines paid his writers and artists by the page. Most of his employees preferred this-but not Harvey Kurtzman. Kurtzman was a freelancer who worked on Frontline Combat, a true-to-life battle comic that portrayed the negative aspects of war. He enjoyed writing it, but it took so long to research and write that he couldn’t make a living doing it. So he went to Gaines and asked for a raise. Gaines refused, but suggested an alternative-in addition to his current work, Kurtzman could produce a satirical comic, which would be easier and more profitable to write. Kurtzman liked the idea and immediately started creating it.
The first issue of Tales Calculated to Drive You Mad: Humor in a Jugular Vein debuted in August 1952. It was a flop…and so were the next two issues. But Gaines didn’t know it; back then, it took so long to get sales reports that the fourth issue-which featured a Superman spoof called Superduperman-was already in the works before Gaines realized he was losing money. By then, Mad had started to sell.
RED SCARE
Gaines didn’t expect Mad to be as successful as his other comics, but it turned out to be the only one that survived the wave of anti-comic hysteria that swept the country during the McCarthy era.
In 1953, Frederic Wertham, a noted psychologist and self-proclaimed “mental hygienist”, published a book called The Seduction of the Innocents, a scathing attack on the comic book industry. Few comics were left untouched-Wertham denounced Batman and Robin as homosexuals, branded Wonder Woman a lesbian, and claimed that such words as “arghh”, “blam”, “thunk”, and “kapow” were producing a generation of illiterates. The charges were outlandish, but the public believed it; churches across the country even held comic book burnings.
To defend themselves, big comic book publishers established the Comics Code Authority (CCA) to set standards of “decency” for the comic book industry and issue a seal of approval to comics that passed scrutiny. (Among the co-called reforms: only “classic” monsters such as vampires and werewolves could be shown; authority figures such as policemen, judges, and government officials could not be shown in any way that encouraged “disrespect for authority,” and the words “crime”, “horror”, and “weird” were banned from comic book titles.) Magazine distributors would no longer sell comics that didn’t adhere to CCA guidelines.
Gaines refused to submit his work the the CCA, but he couldn’t withstand public pressure. By 1954, only four EC titles were left. Amazingly, Mad was one of them.
MAD LIVES
Gaines knew Mad wouldn’t survive long unless he did something drastic to save it. So rather than fight the CCA, he avoided it: He dropped Mad‘s comic book format and turned it into a full-fledged “slick” magazine. Thus, it was no longer subject to CCA censorship.
The first Mad magazine was published in the summer of 1955. “We really didn’t know how Mad, the slick edition, was going to come out,” one early Mad staffer later recalled, “but the people whop printed it were laughing and getting a big kick out of it, so we said ‘This has got to be good.’”
The first issue sold so many copies that it had to be sent back for a second printing. By 1960, sales hit 1 million copies, and Mad was being read by an estimated 58% of American college students and 43% of high school students.
In 1967, Warner Communications, which owned DC Comics, bought Mad, but it couldn’t affect sales or editorial content: as part of the deal, Warner had to leave Gaines alone. In 1973 sales hit an all-time high of 2.4 million copies; since then they’ve leveled off at 1 million annually in the United States. There are also 12 foreign editions. Gaines died in 1992, but Mad continues to thrive.
WHAT, ME WORRY?
Alfred E. Neuman has been Mad magazine’s mascot for years. But his face and even his “What, me worry?” slogan predate the magazine by 50 years. They were adapted from advertising postcards issued by a turn-of-the-century dentist from Topeka, Kansas, who called himself “Painless Romine”.
Mad artists were able to rationalize their plagiarism, according to Harvey Kurtzman, after they discovered that Romaine himself had lifted the drawing from an illustration in a medical textbook showing a boy who had gotten too much iodine in his system.
Kurtzman first dubbed the boy “Melvin Koznowski”. But he was eventually renamed Alfred E. Neuman, after a nerdy fictional character on the “Henry Morgan Radio Show.” Strangely enough, that character had been named after a real-life Alfred Newman, who was the composer and arranger for more than 250 movies, including The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Grapes of Wrath.
MAD FACTS
*In 1965, Mad magazine was turned into an off-Broadway play called The Mad Show. Notices were sent out to New York theater critics in the form of ransom notes tied to bricks. The show gave performances at 3:00 p.m. and midnight, and sold painted rocks, Ex-Lax, Liquid Drano, and hair cream in the lobby. The play got great reviews from the press and ran two years, with bookings in Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, and other major cities. It was reportedly a major influence on the creators of “Laugh-In”.
*The Mad Movie, Gaines’ first attempt to adapt Mad for the silver screen, was dumped before production began, and Up The Academy, Mad’s second effort, was so bad that Gaines paid $50,000 to have all references to the magazine edited out of the film. An animated TV series in the early 1970s was pulled before it aired. In the mid-1990s, “Mad TV” debuted on the Fox network.
This special edition book covers the three “lost” Bathroom Readers – Uncle John’s 5th, 6th and 7th book all in one. The huge (and hugely entertaining) volume covers neat stories like the Strange Fate of the Dodo Bird, the Secrets of Mona Lisa, and more …
We (meaning I) present observations on the scientific publishing process which (meaning that) are important and timely in that unless I have more published papers soon, I will never get another job. These observations are consistent with the theory that it is difficult to do good science, write good scientific papers, and have enough publications to get future jobs.
1. Introduction
Scientific papers (e.g. Schulman 1988; Schulman & Fomalont 1992; Schulman, Bregman, & Roberts 1994; Schulman & Bregman 1995; Schulman 1996) are an important, though poorly understood, method of publication. They are important because without them scientists cannot get money from the government or from universities. They are poorly understood because they are not written very well (see, for example, Schulman 1995 and selected references therein). An excellent example of the latter phenomenon occurs in most introductions, which are supposed to introduce the reader to the subject so that the paper will be comprehensible even if the reader has not done any work in the field. The real purpose of introductions, of course, is to cite your own work (e.g. Schulman et al. 1993a), the work of your advisor (e.g. Bregman, Schulman, & Tomisaka 1995), the work of your spouse (e.g. Cox, Schulman, & Bregman 1993), the work of a friend from college (e.g. Taylor, Morris, & Schulman 1993), or even the work of someone you have never met, as long as your name happens to be on the paper (e.g. Richmond et al. 1994). Note that these citations should not be limited to refereed journal articles (e.g. Collura et al. 1994), but should also include conference proceedings (e.g. Schulman et al. 1993b), and other published or unpublished work (e.g. Schulman 1990). At the end of the introduction you must summarize the paper by reciting the section headings. In this paper, we discuss scientific research (section 2), scientific writing (section 3) and scientific publication (section 4), and draw some conclusions (section 5).
2. SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
The purpose of science is to get paid for doing fun stuff if you’re not a good enough programmer to write computer games for a living (Schulman et al. 1991). Nominally, science involves discovering something new about the universe, but this is not really necessary. What is really necessary is a grant. In order to obtain a grant, your application must state that the research will discover something incredibly fundamental. The grant agency must also believe that you are the best person to do this particular research, so you should cite yourself both early (Schulman 1994) and often (Schulman et al. 1993c). Feel free to cite other papers as well (e.g. Blakeslee et al. 1993; Levine et al. 1993), so long as you are on the author list. Once you get the grant, your university, company, or government agency will immediately take 30 to 70% of it so that they can heat the building, pay for Internet connections, and purchase large yachts. Now it’s time for the actual research. You will quickly find out that (a) your project is not as simple as you thought it would be and (b) you can’t actually solve the problem. However (and this is very important) you must publish anyway (Schulman & Bregman 1994).
3. Scientific Writing
You have spent years on a project and have finally discovered that you cannot solve the problem you set out to solve. Nonetheless, you have a responsibility to present your research to the scientific community (Schulman et al. 1993d). Be aware that negative results can be just as important as positive results, and also that if you don’t publish enough you will never be able to stay in science. While writing a scientific paper, the most important thing to remember is that the word “which” should almost never be used. Be sure to spend at least 50% of your time (i.e. 12 hours a day) typesetting the paper so that all the tables look nice (Schulman & Bregman 1992).
4. Scientific Publishing
You have written the paper, and now it is time to submit it to a scientific journal. The journal editor will pick the referee most likely to be offended by your paper, because then at least the referee will read it and get a report back within the lifetime of the editor (Schulman, Cox, & Williams 1993). Referees who don’t care one way or the other about a paper have a tendency to leave manuscripts under a growing pile of paper until the floor collapses, killing the 27 English graduate students who share the office below. Be aware that every scientific paper contains serious errors. If your errors are not caught before publication, you will eventually have to write an erratum to the paper explaining (a) how and why you messed up and (b) that even though your experimental results are now totally different, your conclusions needn’t be changed. Errata can be good for your career. They are easy to write, and the convention is to reference them as if they were real papers, leading the casual reader (and perhaps the Science Citation Index) to think that you have published more papers than you really have (Schulman et al. 1994).
5. Conclusions
The conclusion section is very easy to write: all you have to do is to take your abstract and change the tense from present to past. It is considered good form to mention at least one relevant theory only in the abstract and conclusion. By doing this, you don’t have to say why your experiment does (or does not) agree with the theory, you merely have to state that it does (or does not). We (meaning I) presented observations on the scientific publishing process which (meaning that) are important and timely in that unless I have more published papers soon, I will never get another job. These observations are consistent with the theory that it is difficult to do good science, write good scientific papers, and have enough publications to get future jobs.
This classic article, by E. Robert Schulman is from the airchives of the Annals of Improbable Research. Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.
Ryann Ford, an Austin based architectural and interiors photographer, has created a body of work that is a complete opposite of her usual subject matter of high end homes and modern architecture.
12 Baskets, the magazine of the non-profit homelss organization Mobile Loaves & Fishes, asked Ryann to document the "bedrooms" of the homeless in her city. You’ve never seen the homeless population’s living arrangements photographed from an architectural photographer’s perspective.
Most people I encounter in my offline life do not surf the internet, and I think about all the rich content they are missing. The people I encounter on the internet work hard to spread interesting content, and are rarely rewarded for their efforts. But in the last few years, quite a few interesting ideas that broke on the web are now breaking through to “meatspace” through book publishing, which is where the real money is -for the lucky ones. This has led to blogs that are started for the express purpose of landing an eventual book deal. Urlesque has compiled a list of blogs that have turned into books, which may be useful in Christmas shopping for your relatives who would enjoy such things but won’t spend time online. Link -via the Presurfer
RSS
Aspiring writers know how it is -those rejection slips just keep piling up. It can be discouraging. But that doesn’t necessarily mean your book is bad. Some of the biggest selling books ever were published only after a string of rejections. Even Anne Frank’s diary was rejected -sixteen times!
Here’s a law that strikes home here at Neatorama. There have been times when I’ve proofread, edited, and corrected the same thing ten times, but somehow a typo appears in the published version. I blame extraterrestrials. John Bangsund of the Victorian Society of Editors coined the term Muphry’s Law in 2003. It states:
Mad magazine has a place in American pop culture as one of the most successful humor magazines ever published. It’s also great bathroom reading. Here’s a brief history.
Gaines paid his writers and artists by the page. Most of his employees preferred this-but not Harvey Kurtzman. Kurtzman was a freelancer who worked on Frontline Combat, a true-to-life battle comic that portrayed the negative aspects of war. He enjoyed writing it, but it took so long to research and write that he couldn’t make a living doing it. So he went to Gaines and asked for a raise. Gaines refused, but suggested an alternative-in addition to his current work, Kurtzman could produce a satirical comic, which would be easier and more profitable to write. Kurtzman liked the idea and immediately started creating it.
Gaines knew Mad wouldn’t survive long unless he did something drastic to save it. So rather than fight the CCA, he avoided it: He dropped Mad‘s comic book format and turned it into a full-fledged “slick” magazine. Thus, it was no longer subject to CCA censorship.
(Image source: 
MAD FACTS
Abstract
This classic article, by E. Robert Schulman is from the airchives of the Annals of Improbable Research. Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.
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Most people I encounter in my offline life do not surf the internet, and I think about all the rich content they are missing. The people I encounter on the internet work hard to spread interesting content, and are rarely rewarded for their efforts. But in the last few years, quite a few interesting ideas that broke on the web are now breaking through to “meatspace” through book publishing, which is where the real money is -for the lucky ones. This has led to blogs that are started for the express purpose of landing an eventual book deal. Urlesque has compiled a list of blogs that have turned into books, which may be useful in Christmas shopping for your relatives who would enjoy such things but won’t spend time online. 
