Art & Story 025 – The Big Merchandise
February 13, 2008 by Mark
Filed under Art & Story, Podcast
This episode Jerzy and Mark discuss the role of merchandise in their comic work, also listener emails and an audio comment that keep the discussion rolling.
Contributing to the conversation this week was Aaron Macom from Sci-Fi Dig.
We also mentioned Rise Kraken, an upcoming series by Jerzy Drozd and Matt Shepherd.
An attempt at G.I. Joe perpetrated by Jerzy & Mark in 1995.
We also gushed about how much we loved Dan Slott & Ty Templeton’s I’m with Stupid trade.
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Sketches and prints at cons are such a weird thing. So many of the people I know (my teenage self included) look at sketches and prints as the ultimate piece of one of a kind swag. I think this all stems from the idea of art (and I mean that in the capitol letters version of ART; genius on paper.)
Granted, I haven’t really ever done this, but if I were to go up to an artist at a show that I wasn’t all that familiar with and I wanted to get a piece of art from them I’d probably ask for an iconic character because it would be one thing about the sketch that I know going in that I would relate to.
Art is such a weird thing when it comes to what we do and don’t like. I remember being very picky in my teenage years about which comic artists I liked, and very condescending to the art I didn’t care for, almost as if only a handful of guys were doing it right (quote unquote) and everyone else was doing it wrong. I remember picking on Al Milgrom a lot with my friends, and if I were to meet him at a show and he was doing cheap or free sketches, I’d probably ask for a character that I loved to make sure that I’d at least enjoy that aspect of the drawing.
Now stepping back from disliking an artist’s style or ability, when someone approaches an artist that they aren’t familiar with I have to assume they’d be wondering if they’d even like the sketch since they aren’t all that familiar with the work and, again, would ask for a known character to hedge their bets.
If you are familiar with and like an artist’s work, I’d be willing to bet that the motive for asking for an iconic character would be more about personalizing the sketch. You like the artist and you like a particular character and bringing the two together, well that’s just peanut butter and jelly (or chocolate, heck AND chocolate.) Sure getting a sketch of their characters would be cool, but the possibility of getting something tailor-made perfect for yourself is probably hard to get past.