The Lost Letter
Mar. 17th, 2004 05:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
urbpanThis is for the few of you who remember Don't Shoot! It's Only Comics
This is a letter that a friend never sent, until now, as a wedding present. Don't Shoot! had a vibrant letters page during the last few issues, including a letter I printed from another self-publisher who also ran a zine distro in Denver, who said my zine sucked (more or less). (I said that it was too bad that self-published comics had to be sold in gay porn shops because real comic book stores won't carry them. He said that if my comic was any good (like his) then it would be carried in real comic book stores)
The other references are to Greg Moutafis, whose latest comic is here: (maybe requires a membership?) http://groups.msn.com/MaxThrills and Rich Mackin (www.richmackin.org or livejournal user name richmackin). Some other references are so obscure it took me a couple seconds to get them, then I laughed my ass off. Some are ungettable. It was fun doing a comic book. If a gold meteor lands where I can claim it, maybe I'll do it again. I'll put this letter up on the "Whatever Happened to Don't Shoot!?" page on the Urbpan Pantheist Website, whenever it is I get around to making it.
Jef—
First of all, congratulations on yet another excellent issue of Don't Shoot. Since the disappearance of 'Killer Ape', I was at a loss of where to look for Greg Moutafis' work, and it was a pleasure to find even a small example of his art in Issue 2. It was a desire to find a reliable source of high-quality comics such as yours that drove me to leave Denver (as stuck-up a city as one could ever have the misfortune of being associated with, and completely devoid of any good used gay porn comics shops) in the first place.
As enjoyable as the issue was, I have some questions/suggestions:
1. Do you write the letters yourself? I ask, because the publication's title "Don't Shoot...' infers an awareness of the intellectual discrimination which fans/practitioners of the 'sequential art' art-form are often subjected to. That a publication named for such a phenomenon would then itself become a target of such negative critical opinion seems too crisp and tight a package for my liking. Also, the notion that fans/practitioners of the comics medium would engage in that very same type of closed-minded debate themselves seems so unlikely, that I have decided that these so-called 'unsolicited critical essays' you keep printing are part of some post-modern thing you're doing for attention.
2. Now that we have plugged all of the holes in the Bughause story line, perhaps some brave artist will step up and fill in the blanks in Rich Makin's life. I checked through my back issues of not only DSIOC, but of every other form of printed matter produced in the state of Massachusetts in the last six years, and there seems to be nearly thirty-eight minutes of Rich's life not yet captured in the sequential art form.
It seems that some of the creators are taking issue with the idea of themes. As a fan, I think it is a treat to see how different artists each approach the same topic. Perhaps the contributors would be more enthusiastic about some of the following suggestions:
1. Each contributor interprets the lyrics of one of your own (or you lovely wife Carley's), hit songs.
2. Unauthorized biographies of certain comic stars. Some ideas might be "Help, I've Been Seven Years Old For Thirty Years" by Billy Keene, or "Franklin: He was always Charlie Whitey to me."
3. Cross-overs with other titles, such as "Very Vicky Turns The Deep Ones Down One After The Other."
4. Take a cue from WFNX, and simply have 'Comic Anarchy.'
5. Have each comic make a statement, maybe clear some things up. For example: Has anyone else noticed that the 3M motto is 'Quality, PerforMance, Reliability' -three words, but only one 'M'? Maybe one of your contributors could write a letter to the 3M corporation and ask what's up with that.
6. One word: Titsn'ass.
7. The Bible's been done in comic form, but the Koran is wide open.
8. Some sort of crime-fighting theme. I miss that in comics. Crime-fighting, or neatly-drawn, linear stories about anthropomorphic, day-glo orange cats who engage in caterwauling, overeating, and pestering their hideously deformed, bug-eyed owners.
Also, I noticed that your letter page is getting a great deal of attention lately. Maybe you could do a book of just letters -wait, that's been done.
Well, that's all I can think of right off the top of my head. Thanks for printing this. Letter pages are important, because it's the only way that non-comic artists such as myself and the uptight jerk who wrote the previous letter can get anything printed in a comics zine.
Yours truly—
--G
This is a letter that a friend never sent, until now, as a wedding present. Don't Shoot! had a vibrant letters page during the last few issues, including a letter I printed from another self-publisher who also ran a zine distro in Denver, who said my zine sucked (more or less). (I said that it was too bad that self-published comics had to be sold in gay porn shops because real comic book stores won't carry them. He said that if my comic was any good (like his) then it would be carried in real comic book stores)
The other references are to Greg Moutafis, whose latest comic is here: (maybe requires a membership?) http://groups.msn.com/MaxThrills and Rich Mackin (www.richmackin.org or livejournal user name richmackin). Some other references are so obscure it took me a couple seconds to get them, then I laughed my ass off. Some are ungettable. It was fun doing a comic book. If a gold meteor lands where I can claim it, maybe I'll do it again. I'll put this letter up on the "Whatever Happened to Don't Shoot!?" page on the Urbpan Pantheist Website, whenever it is I get around to making it.
Jef—
First of all, congratulations on yet another excellent issue of Don't Shoot. Since the disappearance of 'Killer Ape', I was at a loss of where to look for Greg Moutafis' work, and it was a pleasure to find even a small example of his art in Issue 2. It was a desire to find a reliable source of high-quality comics such as yours that drove me to leave Denver (as stuck-up a city as one could ever have the misfortune of being associated with, and completely devoid of any good used gay porn comics shops) in the first place.
As enjoyable as the issue was, I have some questions/suggestions:
1. Do you write the letters yourself? I ask, because the publication's title "Don't Shoot...' infers an awareness of the intellectual discrimination which fans/practitioners of the 'sequential art' art-form are often subjected to. That a publication named for such a phenomenon would then itself become a target of such negative critical opinion seems too crisp and tight a package for my liking. Also, the notion that fans/practitioners of the comics medium would engage in that very same type of closed-minded debate themselves seems so unlikely, that I have decided that these so-called 'unsolicited critical essays' you keep printing are part of some post-modern thing you're doing for attention.
2. Now that we have plugged all of the holes in the Bughause story line, perhaps some brave artist will step up and fill in the blanks in Rich Makin's life. I checked through my back issues of not only DSIOC, but of every other form of printed matter produced in the state of Massachusetts in the last six years, and there seems to be nearly thirty-eight minutes of Rich's life not yet captured in the sequential art form.
It seems that some of the creators are taking issue with the idea of themes. As a fan, I think it is a treat to see how different artists each approach the same topic. Perhaps the contributors would be more enthusiastic about some of the following suggestions:
1. Each contributor interprets the lyrics of one of your own (or you lovely wife Carley's), hit songs.
2. Unauthorized biographies of certain comic stars. Some ideas might be "Help, I've Been Seven Years Old For Thirty Years" by Billy Keene, or "Franklin: He was always Charlie Whitey to me."
3. Cross-overs with other titles, such as "Very Vicky Turns The Deep Ones Down One After The Other."
4. Take a cue from WFNX, and simply have 'Comic Anarchy.'
5. Have each comic make a statement, maybe clear some things up. For example: Has anyone else noticed that the 3M motto is 'Quality, PerforMance, Reliability' -three words, but only one 'M'? Maybe one of your contributors could write a letter to the 3M corporation and ask what's up with that.
6. One word: Titsn'ass.
7. The Bible's been done in comic form, but the Koran is wide open.
8. Some sort of crime-fighting theme. I miss that in comics. Crime-fighting, or neatly-drawn, linear stories about anthropomorphic, day-glo orange cats who engage in caterwauling, overeating, and pestering their hideously deformed, bug-eyed owners.
Also, I noticed that your letter page is getting a great deal of attention lately. Maybe you could do a book of just letters -wait, that's been done.
Well, that's all I can think of right off the top of my head. Thanks for printing this. Letter pages are important, because it's the only way that non-comic artists such as myself and the uptight jerk who wrote the previous letter can get anything printed in a comics zine.
Yours truly—
--G
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no subject
Date: 2004-03-17 02:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-18 06:21 am (UTC)"Very Vicky Turns The Deep Ones Down One After The Other." Hee hee hee. (Okay, it probably does help to have been there.)
But who doesn't love a Garfield, Family Circus or Peanuts joke?
B
Well, some of us WERE there, ok?!
Date: 2004-03-19 09:32 am (UTC)Deep Ones, Burnt Toast (take 2)
Date: 2004-03-19 12:22 pm (UTC)Steve: (Hurls latest Don't Shoot over shoulder) "That Vicky chick can bite me. She doesn't know what she's missing!"
Dan: "Yeah. It's not like we're called the 'Deep Ones' for our intellectual assets."
Skip: "You said a mouthful."
Andy: "Ow."
Steve: "Actually, Skip, in your case that would be more of a ear full."
Skip: "I'll give you a face full if you don't pack up your damn drums."
Steve: "Already did. Neener! Hey, what's up with the rodent?"
Andy: "Ow. Guys?"
Dan: "He's got that stupid pig-tail of his caught in the toaster again. I'll go warm up the van. I helped him last time."
Andy: "Ow. Thanks a lot, Dan. Listen, if someone could just--ow!"
Skip: "Sorry Andy, but like Captain Kirk once said, 'The needs of the...us...gives me the right to do whatever I think we have to do to get to the gig on time.' Something like that. Anyways, Steve, please, just unplug the damn thing and drag him along. I'll take care of the OmniVox myself. We've gotta be at Bunratty's in time for soundcheck or that coat-check girl's gonna have our heads."
Steve: "Yikes! I forgot about her. You owe me a milk for this, pal."
LATER, AT THE GIG...
Skip: (Twiddles knobs on the strangely cryptic user-interface of a battered, ancient and eerily-glowing OmniVox amplifier) "Why was Andy yelling in the middle of that song? He's not supposed to come in until the chorus."
Dan: "Beats me. Top Brown Only?"
Steve: (from behind a small fortress of drums) "You wanted me to plug it back in when we got here, right?"
BaDump!
Happy Joy, -skip kent
Re: Deep Ones, Burnt Toast (take 2)
Date: 2004-03-19 12:39 pm (UTC)-sk
Re: Deep Ones, Burnt Toast (take 2)
Date: 2004-03-19 12:41 pm (UTC)