Arsenic Lullaby- Casper weirdness continues and commissions

When we last left our hero- he was trying to get a publisher to grasp the stupidity of not hiring him to work on Casper the Friendly ghost. As I'm going to rant here a little more than I'm ready to do in general ( and since I know you fellow steemians can keep your mouths shut) this rant is technically an exclusive ( for as long as I can keep myself from ranting everywhere else...I'd guess about a week.)

Quick recap/tale of the tape.
American Mythology -mid to low level publisher with sales in the bottom 200 of comic books (5000 or so copies per issue) that has the rights to publish Casper the Friendly Ghost

Me- multi award nominated writer and illustrator who has done work on Mad Magazine, the Tick, Valiant Comics, and Comedy Central...and has ten times the reach on social media that this publisher does, who has asked to work on Casper the Friendly Ghost...and been blown off.

We all clear so far? You can read previous blogs on my here steemit page to get a more in depth and amusing play by play, but to make a long story short they decided to ignore me...and then ignore all of my fans who went to their pathetically low traffic Facebook page.

Which is not smart if you are looking to sell comic books. It's always possible that isn't their purpose.

People get into making comics for any of the following three reasons
1- they want to make something really good in comic book form
2-they want to make money
3-they want to stroke themselves off about how they work in the comic book industry

It can also be a combination of any of those and you could still have a fighting chance at some success. but ONLY having no.3 all but guarantees you will never make anything that matters.

I am not at the stage yet where I would feel confident guessing what there motivation is...BUT turning down someone who is a top tier illustrator AND a successful promoter...kinda leads one towards thinking it is no.3.

OR there is always...
4- you're an idiot.

Lemme show you what I am dealing with...and actually what there entire comic book industry is dealing with, because to quote my friend and fellow Publisher Michael Kingston "that's comics in a nutshell"

It's pros and publishers who don't understand how to turn situations to their advantage and continually drop the ball.

I asked my readers to lay off of posting pleas to hire me, on the American Mythology FB page....so that the page would go from the buzz of traffic and interest (with us on it raising hell) back to nothing but tumble weeds and the occasional "like" from one of their relatives.

And that is exactly what happened...

five....five fucking likes.

I'd hang myself if I had the rights to a property such as Casper the friendly Ghost and only managed to get 5 likes on a post promoting an issue. This "company" has five or six different comic book titles, including The three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy, Stargate, and Zorro...and they can't get anyone to give a flying fuck. And that's not just FB, it's the same story on Twitter and they haven't even bothered to post on Instagram for like a year.

You think that's going to get stores excited to carry their books? L-O-L

BUT...it gets better...here is what we are dealing with...make note of the circled name.

That guy died in the late 80's...so the book is nothing but reprinted stories...BUT that's fine since they are reprinting stories from one of the greatest Casper artists ever, Warren Kremer...that's K-R-E-M-E-R, not Kramer. These f*cking guys, misspelled the name of the artist who's work they are trying to get people interested in. This is what I am dealing with...

They have so little respect or knowledge of the material, that they spell the fucking guy's name wrong AND don't bother to educate anyone as to who the fuq he is.

SO, anyone who KNOWS who Warren Kremer was, knows that they can't even spell his name. and those who DON'T KNOW who he is aren't given any reason to care and can't google him because they spelled his fucking name wrong.

This is like Marvel Comics reprinting Spider-Man and saying it was written by Stan Lou.

and they did this in two different posts.

This is a company that cannot get ANY traction promoting online, apparently has no money to pay for new material, and no understanding on how to get people interested in old material...and they have ME asking to help them and they are saying "no".

You'd have to flat out be an idiot...OR the whole thing is a tax shelter.

People like this are more common in the comic book industry that you could guess. If you only knew how much valuable intellectual property that COULD be helping stores make money and bring in new fans, was in the hands of people who have no idea what they are doing your head would spin.

BUT since I want to work on this book, I message they guys ( I'm finding myself being less and less...oh...professional, each time I message because I'm really starting to lose interest in changing their mind about hiring me)

They saw this friday night. I got no response AND they didn't correct the spelling error...It is Monday morning as I type this. I know they saw it (because it said "seen" and I know they went to my blog ( because it's my website and I can see the analytics). So they just left the miss spelling because...?

But that's where we are at. I'm going to TRY to play nice for another week or so and then if they don't take a smart pill I'm just going to make an example out of them.

Having said all that here's some pics of sketches for commissions I'm working on. For both of these the people gave me pretty clear direction as far as what elements were important and a general idea of what the scene should look like. I drew up a bunch of samples/options for them to pick from for the final illustration...

First Alfred E Neuman the mascot from Mad Magazine

and then Casper ( these scenes were requested...obviously nothing like this would happen in a Vasper story I did for children...couch...)

I'm just about done and I'll show you guys the final results this week. and give you any updates I have on the Casper situation

In the meantime, I suggest you sign up for my Arsenic Lullaby Email updates (full of stuff like the blogs you get here but with more ranting and inside info)

http://www.arseniclullabies.com/newslettersignup19.html

Follow me on Instagram ( souly for the purpose of helping me look cool)

https://www.instagram.com/arsenic_lullaby_official/

and check out Michael Kingstone's (who I mentioned earlier) work-

http://www.headlockedcomic.com/

see you in a day or two!