inspirational Work by A. Paul Weber

Andreas Paul Weber (1893-1980) was born in Arnstadt Thuringia and worked principally in the Weimar period when all those great German Expressionists were doing their German Expressionist thing. He illustrated Baron of Münchhausen, among other books, and spent 3 years in jail for criticizing the Third Reich.

Good Stuff!

New Figure Drawing, and Sucking Less

After being ill for so long I've only recently gotten back into drawing the figure from life, and it's definitely true: if you don't use it, you lose it. It's taken me a few sessions to get back to something resembling my old groove. I'm pretty happy with this one, considering.

And a gesture:

Another Duck Island Rough, Working With My Favorite Model

Kid poses are getting a little easier. I had some photo ref, but not these specific poses. When you try to get a seven year old to pose, they look very...posed. So I just gave my favorite model some general instructions.

"You're talking to the ducks!"

"You're shaking hands with a duck!"

"You're sneaking up on them!"

"Dancing! No, just silly dancing this time! Not ballet dancing!"

It's as fun as it sounds. And exhausting. It's exhausting just watching a seven year old. I don't know how you parents do it. The photos give me a feel of the general action and the body language of a real kid and I work from there. As a general rule, I age down. The kid's book kid age is usually around 5, but I've found that 5 year olds are even more unruly than 7 year olds, so 7 tends to do the job.

 The worst is a reluctant kid. They really have to be into it, or it's a no go! The most frustrating thing in the world is trying to get a reluctant kid to work with you. So the last time I had a kid model I tried to make sure by asking, "are they into it? Because if they're not into the idea, then it's probably not going to work. I'm always grateful to the adults and to the kids of course, but it's better when they want to be there and aren't compelled to be there.

As a reward I give them posters of some of my work (if you'd like a poster of your own, you can get one, here at an economical price), which the kids seem happy with. Awhile back I let my favorite model keep the foam rubber sword and axe I got from Target for a buck each when we were doing pirates, and she seemed to appreciate it.

Always searching for cooperative and enthusiastic kid models in the Davis area. And now that it's summer I also provide popsicles!

Oops!

I just realized I accidentally reused two ducks in this illustration from the previous image! Those ducks were far in the background, and mostly cropped and will  eventually be re-inked and probably a little redrawn in the finish so it shouldn't matter much, but reusing art always seems like a cheat, so it's something I really try to avoid.

So do you think you can spot the culprits in the previous post? That'll keep you busy on your coffee break...

New Rough Spread for "Duck Island" Work in Progress

Another rough for my early reader book in progress. I wanted all the ducks to have a certain amount of personality and naturalistic attitude, and drew about 50 or so in total, but these were the ones that made the cut. there were a few others that I would have liked to have included, but there just wasn't room. I still have a few more pages I might squeeze them into.

Another Rough Spread For my Early Reader Book in Progress

Now that the Ladybug and Gentleman Beetle dummy is done, I'm back to the dummy for the early reader book I was working on. This one is coming along briskly! I went back and forth between portraying the ducks in a more realistic way and this more cartoony portrayal, finally opting for cartoony. It fits the tone of the story better, and gives me more options for expression.

A Review and Remembrance of Power Pack Classic by Louise Simonson and June Brigman

Power Pack was my favorite comic book.

OK, officially it was the X-Men and my favorite character was Wolverine because I knew Power Pack was a kid’s comic and wasn’t cool, even though I was 11, a year younger than the oldest of the characters in the comic, Alex..

 While most comics were 22 story pages and 75 cents, the first issue of Power Pack was a “King-Sized Collector’s item” 32 pages and a buck, my complete allowance for the week. I remember it being a lot bigger. In fact, reading it again for the first time in years, I still had to check because Louise Simonson packed (no pun intended) so much story in those 32 pages.

At the time superhero comics dominated. Archie Comics were still in print, but the Harvey Comics like Richie Rich and Hot Stuff that I had grown up on had just ceased publication just a year or two earlier. It was a time when superhero comics were still accessible to young readers, even though their readership was just beginning to skew older. So a true kid comic with true kid protagonists was not to be found anywhere. With the exception of Power Pack.

Though I first bought Power Pack at my local comic store (later I got a subscription), it could still be found on the spinner rack at grocery stores and 7-11s. A comic book was only a little more than a candy bar and just as much of an impulse item for your average kid. Not that kids don’t still buy comics, but when they do, they’re not superhero comics, and they have to commit to a graphic novel which can run 10 bucks or more, not exactly pocket money. Pamphlet comics like the kind I bought as a kid can only be purchased in comics stores at 3 to 4 bucks a pop, and they're no longer written for kids, and kids don’t buy them. The average comics shop patron is over 30, the same readers that bought superhero comics in earlier decades, grown up.

Power Pack Classic, the recently published reprint series, has been marketed to this audience. It’s sold alongside superhero books from the same era as a nostalgia product, and nostalgia is the stuff that superhero comics live and breath on. It is not marketed to kids, but Power Pack remains an excellent and very accessible kid’s comic. And thanks to Marvel’s marketing department, Kids don’t know it exists.

The Story

Four kids, Alex, Jack, Katie and Julie Power live in a beach house with their physicist dad and illustrator mom. There are reports of UFOs in the news, and Katie, the youngest, is sure she’s seen one. Katie, like C.S. Lewis’ Lucy in the Narnia books, is not immediately believed, but the UFOs were in the news and the kids are curious. They decide to camp out on their deck just in case they might catch sight of one. Jack is skeptical (or pretends to be) and Alex, the science kid, wants to see if he can see one through his new telescope.

 Katie  is the first to see what turns out to be a spaceship that’s crash-landed on the beach just behind their house.The spaceship is Friday, an artificial intelligence or “smart ship” (which in a world of smart phones and Siri turned out to be a nice bit of unintended prescience) piloted by an injured alien (nicknamed “Whitey”) with the head of a seahorse. They're being chased by lizard-like Snarks, a pernicious alien race that is after the plans for a matter-anti-matter device the kid’s physicist dad has invented. When the same device was developed by Whitey’s ancestors, his entire planet was wiped out, so it's Whitey's mission to prevent this from happening to our own planet, but the Snarks want to build the device to use as as a weapon. After searching the Power’s home the Snarks are unable to find the plans, so they abduct the kid’s parents.

What the Snarks don’t know is that the device has already been built, and is set to be tested by their Dad's boss Carmody the following day, only hours away from wiping out the earth.

Meanwhile Whitey is dying. But there’s one last hope. Among other powers, Whitey can produce force fields and teleport short distances. Before he dies he can transfer some of his powers to the kids, but it’s dangerous and might not work, or worse,could turn them into monsters. The kid’s agree that there’s nothing else to be done, and so before Whitey dies, he gives them his powers. At first the transfer doesn't seem to have worked. With the help of Friday, they try to save their parents from the Snarks, and in the attempt their powers emerge, and each of them get a different power.

The first issue ends on a cliffhanger—they’ve got to save their parents, stop the Snarks from getting the plans for the device, and stop the device from destroying the world. Since this is a superhero comic, the kids decide to each adopt superhero names, a trope that seems a lot more natural coming out of the mouths of kids than adults.

So in all of 36 pages, not only do we get an origin story and a briskly told adventure, but Louise Simonson and June Brigman manage to give each of the Power kids unique personalities, rather than the typical archetypal shorthand that often served for character development in most superhero comics at the time. These are genuine, believable kids, rare not only in comics, but in middle-grade fiction in general, which is the market where the book would easily fall if it were sold today to actual kids instead of aging adults.

One of my favorites is Jack. As a kid I identified with Alex and Julie and didn't like Jack at all, at least initially. He's always teasing--and sometimes bullying--his siblings and making smart-alacky remarks. But even in this first issue we get enough of Jack's vulnerability and insecurity to identify with him--all that bravado is just a mask for his fears. This makes it all the more admirable when he exhibits bravery and generosity as the story progresses.

The first volume of Power Pack Classic reprints the first 10 issues spanning 250 pages. And of course the kids save the world and have other adventures, and continue to develop and grow as characters in a way that few characters in superhero comics do, but I’ll let you enjoy the rest of the story on your own.

Great Feet!

I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about June Brigman, the artist who brought Simonson’s script to life. Brigman can draw believable kids with real kid bodies, a rare talent in artists who draw superheroes for a living.  I remember noticing this strange phenomenon even at the time—when some of the best of the superhero artists would draw kids they always tended to look weird. The proportions were off, the body language was exaggerated and they looked more like dwarfs than kids. Brigman's figures didn’t just look like kids, they held themselves like kids, and moved and and expressed themselves like kids. And now, as an adult and professional illustrator as I admired the art for some reason out of everything else I couldn't help thinking, “she draws such great feet!”

Even as a kid I knew the book was well-drawn—I of course had surprisingly good taste—but Brigman was also a a great storyteller. She knew how to crop an image just right to imply action. The action flowed in a way that was clear and easily readable, while a lot of superhero comics portrayed choppy breaks in the action to the point where you couldn't tell who is punching who, or what had just happened before. 

Though. as a kid I continued to follow the comic through at least half of its run, once Brigman left it was never the same. The artist who followed her, Brent Anderson--who also drew the last story in this collection--did a laudable job, but he didn’t have that talent for drawing kids that June did. As the series went on, the stories became increasingly dependent on the inclusion of other Marvel Comics characters into the mix. Even in this volume we get guest stars like Spider-Man and Cloak and Dagger. Early on, the kid’s interactions with these characters made for good stories. There’s a particularly effective tale where they have to hide Dragon Man in their basement, a child-like truck-sized monster.

I can’t help thinking that all these guest stars were a mistake. The guest stars had a tendency to pull the focus away from the kids, and Power Pack stories without them were always better for it. There was one exception: Franklin Richards, the 6 year old son of Mr. Fantastic and The Invisible Woman from The Fantastic Four, a character that Simonson and Brigman gave more life and depth to than any writer on the Fantastic Four had ever managed.

My guess is that these guest stars were included to attract more readers, but after a while it was as if they couldn’t sell the book without them. The series lasted 62 issues, but I stopped reading when Louise Simonson left earlier in its run. After Brigman left, the comic was running largely on fumes, and once Simonson was gone as well all bets were off.

Where Is Power Pack Now, When We Need it?

There have been many revivals and revamps of the characters of the years. In a desperate attempt to appeal to kids, there was even a version that was done in a more contemporary manga style. But as far as I’m concerned, this is not a franchise where the talent is interchangeable. Louise Simonson and June Brigman are the true heart of the book, and without them Power Pack isn't Power Pack.

 If Brigman and Simonson ever did revisit to the book and Marvel had the smarts to market it to its rightful audience, my hope would be that they would dispense with the guest stars and get back to focusing on the core kid characters. Tying the book to Marvel’s 1980s continuity is the only thing that makes this reprint edition less accessible to a contemporary kid audience. Otherwise I could see it selling well alongside contemporary kid-focused fantasy comics like Kazu Kibuishi’s Amulet.

 Power Pack is a rare and underappreciated gem that deserves its place among the best contemporary kid lit.

Yet another Ladybug and Gentleman Beetle Rough

Almost done with the  book dummy! I'm sure I'll need to make revisions before I send it out, but it's nice to be so close to finished. This may be my first complete traditional book dummy. I really love the process and I'm looking forward to doing many more, and (hopefully) many many actual books.

I don't think any of this will feel real until that first book sees print. Until then, a part of me feels like I'm just playing at being an illustrator. Magazine illustrations and individual commissions don't quite carry the same weight as a real off-set printed book. Handmade books and zines don't quite count either, even though I've made quite a few small odds and ends that I'm proud of.

So, hopefully, it all starts here.

Another Ladybug and Gentleman Beetle Rough: The Inside of the Pumpkin

As an shortcut I used gradients in this one, even though I hate gradients, since it's still in rough form. There won't be any gradients in the final, but in this case it was a quick way to get the point across.

I didnt' anticipate using any kind of extreme perspective in this story, but I wanted to show the contrast in size and how the characters were engulfed by the space. I felt I had two options here: To go for a bird's eye or a worm's eye view. I chose bird's eye to contrast with the image on the previous post which was from more of a worm's eye perspective, though drawing the characters foreshortened from above was a challenge. I think it worked out pretty well, though.

Another Ladybug and Gentleman Beetle Post

Another Ladybug and Gentleman Beetle rough for my dummy in progress. I'm putting this together in Indesign--it's so easy in Indesign to move pages around and get rid of pages and see the whole picture at once, a lot easier than the old cut and paste (with actual glue!), analog way. It makes revisions incredibly easy, and I don't feel so committed to the layout.

The main thing I'm worried about is word to image density. There's a lot of dialogue in the very beginning with Ladybug and Gentleman Beetle basically sitting around, and I want to spread this out in a way that's still engaging and interesting. The entire book is less than 500 words, so this is, of course, relative, but visually and compositionally I don't want any passage of text to be more than about 4 lines or in that general range. The images should be the stars of the show. Always, with a picture book, the challenge is to get the reader to turn the page, and kids can be very fickle readers. They don't have the patience of adults, and this is a relatively quiet story. So enough blogging--back to the drawing board! I hope to get this sucker done in dummy form by next monday at the latest!

Another Gentleman Beetle Rough

Here's another rough spread for my Ladybug and Gentleman Beetle book in progress. Hope everyone had a good holiday!

"I Promise" Says Gentlemen Beetle: Character and Pantomime

I went to figure drawing last night--I went earlier this month as well, but I'm still very rusty. It will take a another few sessions before I get back to form, or share any of my figures here. I really can't go that long without drawing from life without having to get back on it. So for now, more Ladybug and Gentlemen Beetle.

My Favorite Model

As I put together the mock-up of the book, I'm finding that as I draw the images, lines of text become superfluous to the action. The characters body language is increasingly carrying the story, which is as it should be. The best case scenario of a picture book is that the words are as important as the pictures, and the story can't be told without both. In aid of this, I rely on my favorite model. 

One of many blurry photos that helped me get just the right gesture for this pose. What these guys lack in fingers, they make up for in arms and legs, so then it's about how to best translate human body language into bug body language.

Character and Pantomime

I based the earlier dance sequence on stills I took from Fred Estaire and Ginger Rogers. Watching the film by frames I began to really see how Ginger Rogers was at times struggling to keep up with him. I never quite realized just how good a dancer he was! But I wanted my own dance to have a little more give and take. Here's that post if you missed it. 

But often it's hard to visualize the gesture if you can't see it. I have a full length mirror in my studio, but often that's not enough, and so then it's time to prop up my camera and set the timer. Then I translate this gesture into bug anatomy, adding a little exaggeration and drama and hopefully subtlety. Cartoon anatomy has its challenges--everything is simplified and distilled.

In that earlier dance sequence linked above, one of the hardest things to do was to have Gentleman Beetle give a bow and offer his hand in that courtly manner of a traditional gentlemen. When drawing this pose, I neglected to use my favorite model, so I had to make it up from a few scant pieces of reference found online and my imagination. Little problems arose, for instance: my Gentleman Beetle lacks not only hands but a neck. All that head tilting and head raising has to be implied without a neck. His back, too, is stiff as a board, since it's all shell. So the arms legs and held tilt have to carry much of the motion. And I almost forgot to give him antennae when he took off his hat--I hadn't yet had to draw him hatless. 

The more I draw the characters, the more I get to know them and how they work in space. Sometimes they've surprise me by subtly changing the tone of a phrase written in the prose. While in the prose I said, "Ladybug smiled" when she asks Gentleman Beetle for reassurance, suggesting that she's not at all as frightened as her words suggest, here her body language could easily translate as earnest entreaty. But she's still smiling. It's not as obvious. Should it be more obvious? I decided that no, this works better. Just as Gentleman Beetle has his own mock expressions as he playfully describes the scenario, Ladybug in her own way is just as clever.

Arriving on the Island...

So I'm concentrating in the next week or so primarily on the Ladybug and Gentlemen Beetle book which is going pretty briskly, but here's a rough from the early reader book I was working on before. I'll be returning to that one soon. I've been having fun with both, and barring anything unforeseen, should be back to full productivity!

Ladybug and Gentlemen Beetle Dancing

So I'm making Ladybug and Gentlemen Beetle into a picture book, rather than an early reader. Here are some sketches from the dummy in progress. I've always been a fan of sequential action, so here's Ladybug and Gentleman Beetle dancing!

Another Spread for Work in Progress

Another spread. Deliberately messing with scale a little bit. Since the boat is something from their imagination, it's huge when their working on it, smaller when their in it.

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Mary Sue?

In 1973, Paula Smith wrote a story called "A Trekkie's Tale" for a Star Trek fanzine that parodied what was then becoming a common trope in fan fiction written by women. The character in the story was named "Mary Sue." As much as has been made of the story and the trope since, it's surprisingly brief. You can read it here in its entirety.

That's it. That's all there is to it. For all that's been written about the trope, and plenty has been--just Google "Mary Sue" if you're curious--it's all of about 200 words or so.

Essentially Mary Sue is a character who is talented to the point of absurdity and admired by all who come in contact with her. She achieves boundlessly and, if it comes to it, dies valiantly, a soul too good for this world.

In this insightful interview, Paula Smith herself explains the problem with the trope better than anyone I've heard so far. In her own words:

"A story demands headspace, and the Mary Sue wants to come and occupy your whole head, so the writer gets the enjoyment and not the reader. It's a little too much like being used. I suspect that's why an awful lot of people agreed with our assessment."

She also identifies one of the most problematic aspects of the trope as it relates to gender:

"I was really struck when the Doc Savage: Man of Bronze movie came out. I thought: that's a Mary Sue, too!"

"...Any of these wish-fulfillment characters [James Bond, Superman] whose presence in any universe warps it way the heck out of reality. But we don't notice that when it involves men."

Soon after the term "Mary Sue" came into popular use, Marty Sue was added to describe Mary's male counterpart, but Mary Sue was still more commonly used as a pejorative to describe female characters than Marty Sue was to describe male characters, and these canonical male characters, Superman, James Bond and Doc Savage, tended to get a free pass. 

This is why the fact that "Mary Sue" is a woman is not insignificant.

I think it’s fair to assume that male “Mary Sues” existed in fan fiction with equally blatant and amateurish prevalence well before "Mary Sue" was coined. but I also think that  the absurdity of the trope stood out all the more because the characters were women. This fact is significant if we are going to use historical precedent in our evaluation of the term.

Part of the assumptions behind these canonical characters “getting a pass” is because they initiated a certain archetype. They were the model. But women don't have the same archetypal precedents, so they’re by default disenfranchised from getting this “pass.”

In genre fiction, men have more Marty Sue leverage than women. We’re willing to permit more Marty Suishness in male characters than Mary Suishness in female characters.

What separates Marty Sues from their female counterparts is also an aggressive kind of masculinity. Idealized men are given more license to be disliked while still being held up as heroic. They can be ruthless because they are noble. Conan, Batman and Wolverine are great examples of this kind of Marty Sue. The begrudging respect they receive is sometimes treated as a character flaw, but I think it’s a false one. This character embodies a different kind of wish fulfillment. What used to be called the "anti-hero" has become the contemporary go-to Marty Sue.

The contemporary treatment of James Bond in the recent spate of films with Daniel Craig reflects an effort to try to update the Marty Sue trope, but I think this too follows the same pattern. The model is more Conan than super spy. People associate this kind of grittiness with realism, when it’s still just veneer. It’s a trait that women aren’t permitted to have, further requiring them to be more flawed by comparison. Bond has no female equals either in his films, or equivalents in other popular fiction.

On the one hand, the Mary Sue/Marty Sue trope is a useful way to point out this trend in writing. Unfortunately, it doesn't tend to be employed as equally or judiciously to both genders. It's still fundamentally about Mary Sue, and the term is generally used to vilify idealistic portrayals of women. So it’s not simply the origin of the term, but its employment, and the fact that it’s often used as ammunition to dismiss characters that have similar attributes to celebrated male characters that puts it in the realm of sexism.

When Paula Smith identified and named the trope, I don't think she intended it to be about gender. But like all language, once the term went into circulation it took on a life of its own. It became both a convenient way to identify the trope, and a convenient way to hold women to a double standard. Which isn't to say that every use of the term is inherently sexist, or identifying this trope in fiction isn't useful or even helpful as a tool for an author to look at their characters more objectively. But that double standard still exists. 

The term isn't going to go away any time soon. I think we're stuck with it. But if we're going to be pointing out all the Mary Sues we should level the same finger at all the Marty Sues. And if we're allowed our few exceptions--Batman and James Bond--then shouldn't women be able to have the same kinds of characters who embody this same kind of wish-fulfillment?

Because if not, then I don't think our Marty Sues should get off so lightly.

Addendum:

While the trope is often used as a justification for sexism, I think the Mary and Marty Sue CAN be well written. I don’t dismiss the trope. I don’t think the trope by default is an indication of bad writing. Keep in mind that Paula Smith's original piece was a PARODY, exaggerating the worst aspects of the trope, not a definition.

James Bond doesn’t get a pass. Batman doesn’t get a pass. At least not until we see female characters who embody the same archetype who are equally embraced. If precedent is the measure of these “passes” then you can hardly give a blanket dismissal to the same trend in women when they have no such precedent to go by.

But I do think there is such a thing as a well written Superman story or James Bond story. And if these canonical male characters get a pass, it should be because of a compelling story with a compelling conflict, not their precedent as archetypes. Mary Sue can be a well-written character if handled right. 

I'm Drawing!

After months of sporadic and spotty productivity as a result of my illness, I'm back to it! This is a rough spread for an early reader dummy I'm working on. This time I've done a little more homework and am confident that I can do a book that will be a good fit for the early reader market. 

This book is written at the very early end of the spectrum. One thing I noticed with some of these early reader books is a lack of scale. I think a lot of them are well done, but its as if, because the physical size of the book is small, the spaces in the images have to be small. So I'm trying to make a big world is a small package in this one with lots of full bleed spreads. Vocabulary, word count and physical size doesn't have to limit the scope of the book. 

Freelancing in Publishing, or Why Royalties Don't Make Artists Rich

Why do freelance artists get all those wonderful royalties while other professionals get paid only a flat fee? After all, a plumber doesn't get a royalty for his contract work, and artist's who do freelance work are, like plumbers and construction workers, essentially independent contractors.

But artists for mass media aren't treated the same as other independent contractors because the product they're making hasn't been sold yet, and the people they're making it for don't make a profit until that product is sold. So many of us work for deferred payment. The payment we get initially is an advance. We don't get compensated for the complete value of our work until sales exceed the advance and we begin to accrue a royalty. And there are many many projects that don't sell past the artist's initial advance, or that sell in such small numbers that the royalty amounts to very little. Most of them in fact.

Imagine it this way: I pour the concrete for the foundation to a house and am given an advance that is well below the value of the work done. In exchange, you promise me a percentage of future rentals of the home. How much this will ultimately amount to is based on a number of factors that include fluctuations in the market, the potential that the house will go for long periods unrented, or worse, become abandoned.

 Some artists will sacrifice royalty for a work-for-hire arrangement. They get paid a flat fee for work completed, no royalties or reprint rights beyond the initial contract. The publisher may use their work in any way they wish. The publisher could sell a million copies of a work-for-hire project and the artist will never see a penny more than what they were initially paid. The advantage for the artist is that they do get a guaranteed amount, but it can be llower than what the work may be potentially worth to the publisher.

To extend the metaphor: the contractor doesn't get paid for the true cost of what laying a foundation is worth, but they take the job because it's what is available to them. In this way, artists as independent contractors do no receive anywhere near the equivalent of what other contractors get paid. The average freelance artist does not make the equivalent of what other professionals--like housing contractors--make for their professional work.

So one of the best scenarios for freelancers in the publishing field is the royalty system. Deferred payment. It's a risky way to work, but it's the best option for most of us. We depend on those future potential sales--and they are POTENTIAL sales--nothing guaranteed--to make a reasonable income. 

Yes there are rare occasions when  book is hugely successful and the artist or writer makes royalties that far exceed expectations. Or maybe they become known enough to receive a regular flow of royalties from books that have become steady sellers. Again, this is a small percentage of freelancers and authors, and most of them still aren't getting rich. We can't all be Dr. Seuss or Stephen King. Typical royalties are quite modest. 

But the integrity and quality of the work isn't the same as the success and popularity of the work. You can put the same effort into one project that doesn't receive the same reward as another. This is the same in most professional fields. The best work does not always result in the best pay. Unfortunately, in publishing, the discrepancy can be be much greater. A popular book can outsell a steady seller or modestly successful book by very big numbers. An unsuccessful book can fail at the publisher's expense. And there are far more unsuccessful books than successful ones. It's a risky, unpredictable business all around. 

 Successful publishers are successful for a reason: they know how to stay in that middle range, publish more steady sellers, or at least, more books that make back their initial investment than books that fail, and those rare big sellers help considerably to buoy the rest of their catalog. They base their choices on precedent, professional instinct, magic tricks and blind luck. There's no way to determine for sure just what it was that made that hugely successful book so popular in the first place. 

Getting published by a major publisher is no guarantee of success. You're still at the mercy of a mercurial market, but advances tend to be higher than smaller presses, and your chances are just a little better of getting future royalties. But don't expect a windfall. 

Captain Marvel and Plastic Man, or DC Comics: What the Hell?

There was once a great series back in the 40s called Captain Marvel by Otto Binder and  C.C. Beck Whimsical, funny, and beautifully drawn, it featured characters like Tawny the talking tiger and Captain Marvel Junior. It was  a great series, never condescending to it's audience, great Children's lit.

Then DC Comics acquired the property. For legal reasons--somehow Marvel Comics had gotten the rights to the name--the character was called "Shazam" after the magic word that changed Billy Batson, mild mannered kid reporter, into a superhero. But even with its original artist C.C. Beck, it never quite regained its tone or quality. Not even Beck was satisfied with the scripts he had to illustrate.

Then about a year ago, this happened,

Shazam, Shizazzled

Another favorite character of mine is Plastic Man created by Jack Cole, a series that was genuinely fun and funny and entertaining. With his sidekick Woozie Winks, Plastic Man was a superhero who could stretch into any shape.

 He could disguise himself as anything from a table lamp to a car, but these disguises were always the same color as his costume, red with telltale yellow and black stripes.

DC acquired Plastic Man as well, and after years of sincere but misguided attempts to update the character by a variety of artists, around 2005, Kyle Baker finally got it right:

An all ages comic that was genuinely funny and captured the spirit of the original.

But more recently, this happened:

Rapey Plastic Man?

These updated versions are meant to appeal to a mostly male audience in their 20s and 30s who prefer their superheroes grim and gritty or, well, like this. This is either because of a complete lack of understanding or respect for what made the original comics great, or because they just don't get it, or don't want to get it. But I'm not telling them how to run their show. If this is what their audience wants, so be it.

But There Is Hope

The original comics still exist in pricy reprint editions, sometimes as much as 50 bucks or more, but these collections are directed at the adult collector's market. DC comics has entirely neglected the potential kid audience for these characters. They don't even have to produce new material. They just need to release the reprints at more reasonable prices and do that thing they've long forgotten how to do, market comic books to kids.

It's not as though kids aren't reading both contemporary and classic comics. Tintin, a popular Belgian character that began in 1929 (please try to forget the movie if you can) is still popular in the U.S. and all over the world, read in his original form by the great artist Herge. Great comics like Tintin, Captain Marvel and Plastic Man hold up surprisingly well. They're both good comics and good children's lit. And frankly DC, your contemporary versions of Captain Marvel and Plastic Man are not only poorly conceived, but just plain weird.

So DC, could you please do us a favor and give us reprints that we can afford and put them on the graphic novel shelf next to Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Tintin? I think there's a very receptive new kid audience out there just waiting to discover these great comics if they only knew they existed.

Why Tracking in Contemporary Children's Lit Makes it Harder For Good Books to See Print

Recently I wrote what I'm confident is a good book. When my agent submitted it I got the most glowing rejections I've ever received. It's not over yet, I'm still waiting to hear from a number of publishers, but it's a frustrating situation made all the more frustrating because of the praise its been receiving.

The principal reason the book was rejected? It didn't fit within their catalog. Too long for an early reader book, too short for a middle grade, they didn't know where to place it. Despite the fact that the format, vocabulary and length is no different than the perennially popular Beatrix Potter books that inspired it, they didn't know what to do with it.

I don't mean to sound bitter. It's not the editor's fault. This is the reality of the marketplace. It's how they sell books, and it's worked well for them. Adults use this system to find age appropriate books for their kids. And in the end, publishers need to sell books that parents want to buy.

These terms, "early reader" and "middle grade" are not arbitrary. They relate specifically to something called The Flesch-Kincade Reading Level Scale. It was a system first developed in 1975 to determine the readability of military technical manuals. The scale rates readability by grade level. It's been used in education for decades, and more recently, in marketing books for young readers. There's even a setting on Microsoft Word for determining a Flesch-Kincade score. It can be a great tool to determine the clarity of your writing if you're communicating to a specific audience.

Dr Seuss and Dick and Jane

Before Flesch-Kincade, Dr. Seuss created a book especially for beginning readers as a response to an article written by John Hersey in Life Magazine in criticism of beginning reader primers like Dick and Jane, a series of books that were notoriously bland. The Cat in the Hat used a vocabulary that involved the same repetition and single syllable words that the Dick and Jane books employed, but was anything but bland. The Cat in the Hat was released in 1957 and was an overwhelming success. It spawned not only a sequel but an entire series of beginning reader books from Random House by different authors overseen by Seuss. It was a groundbreaking idea.

The great P.D. Eastman did a number of them. Here's my favorite non-Seuss beginning reader, Go, Dog, Go!:

At the same time, Harper and Row introduced their I Can Read series with books like Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad are Friends and Else Holmelund Minarik and Maurice Sendak's Little Bear series. These books were longer, had chapters and had vocabulary that was a little more sophisticated. They were what would now be referred to as early reader chapter books, books designed for young children to read by themselves without an adult.

Both series resulted in a generation of enthusiastic readers.

Tracked Books

More recently publishers have created whole lines with the intention of further honing in on the developmental advantages of books tracked by age group and reading level. Some of them are great books. Some of them aren't. But in all of them, the word count and vocabulary are dictated by a strict set of guidelines established by Flesch-Kincade.

Here are a couple of examples:

There's a good deal of pressure in education to have kids advance from picture books to chapter books as soon as possible. Even older books like Frog and Toad have been given a developmental category.

So this:

Becomes this:

Over the years, many classic books have been abridged or altered or given new formats or new illustrations to appeal to younger readers. Beatrix Potter is no exception. Now even her books are subjected to this method of tracking. So this:

Becomes this:

Altering the text of a classic book like The Tale of Peter Rabbit to fit into a given track category not only compromises the quality of the original prose and the experience of the book as it was meant to be read, it's pointlessly doctrinaire. Since the original text is written in very simple prose the abridgment  for track purposes is about as hairsplitting as it gets. Up to a certain point, these kinds of changes don't amount to anything useful even for educational purposes.

A testament to the fact that quality lit can exist in this system is that the classic Frog and Toad Are Friends fits into this structure without abridgment. I'm sure there are many well written and illustrated contemporary originals that fit well within this track system. I'm not saying that the track system prevents any good books from being published, but it can, in many ways, tie an author's hands. Authors are forced to contrive their stories to fit within these standards if they want their books to see print.

This tracking method and vocabulary standard has permeated the entire industry. In children's lit, the Flesch-Kincade standard reigns all the way up to middle grade books like Amelia Bedelia and beyond, though less so the further you move up the food chain. Young adult books are immune, but there are still vocabulary lists on the lower end of the middle grade spectrum.

Tracking Doesn't Work

The principal flaw in the track system is that vocabulary and sentence length do not dictate quality or depth. You can fill a book with compound sentences and advanced vocabulary but this does not guarantee that the book will be more intellectually complex than a book with a simpler vocabulary and sentence structure. The focus is on reading level alone. To some degree  this makes sense, since you can't objectively measure the quality or complexity of story, but you can't make kids better readers by advancing them from one reading level to the next in the same way you would advance them from multiplication tables to fractions. Literature just doesn't work that way. If kids are discouraged from choosing books that are considered to be at a lower reading level than their tracked reading level they could potentially miss out on a lot of great books. 

But this is now the contemporary thinking. Now kids aren't only discouraged but shamed for wanting to read books that don't have the right number on them. If the number isn't high enough, it makes them feel as though they're not achieving. But just because your kindergartener has the vocabulary and reading comprehension of a third grader does not mean you should discourage them from reading great picture books. 

 The best way for kids to become great readers is to allow them to choose their own books based on what interests them. The number of compound sentences or multi-syllabilic words has nothing to do with what makes a book great. Great literature, whether intended for children or adults, will always remain great literature.

Genre, Forms and Marketing Terms in the YA and Children's Markets

I frequently hear people refer to picture books, graphic novels and YA fiction as genres. So to clear this up once and for all, here's a cheat sheet:

A Form

A form refers to what the thing is, not what it's about. Not its content, but how that content is delivered. Its format.

Examples: Novels, short stories, comics, picture books, poems.


A Genre

Genre is a way to categorize stories by content usually based on the tropes and conventions that distinguish them.

Examples: Science Fiction, Mystery, Romance.

Fiction that doesn't fit in a particular genre is by default referred to as "literary fiction" but this doesn't necessarily make genre fiction any less literary. In the past if you wanted to write literature with a capital "L" it couldn't contain genre tropes, but this is changing.

Non fiction genres would include history, biography, autobiography or anything in the realm of the arts and sciences that you could put a general category around.

Genre can also be discussed in terms of form, but in a story sense rather than in a format sense. This has  more to do with structure than category.

Picture Books vs. Storybooks

The true picture book is equally dependent on words and pictures. Take out the pictures and it wouldn't make any sense. Some picture books work just fine without any words at all. Picture books like comics fall within the general area of sequential art--stories told with pictures set in sequence.

 Storybooks, and there are fewer and fewer of them these days, are illustrated prose, but with lots and lots of pictures. Storybooks fall into a looser formal category because some of them can just as easily fall in the realm of novels or illustrated short stories.

Great Picture Books Are Great Literature!

Nothing to add here. I just thought it needed to be said.

A Marketing Term

This is how you categorize books in order the sell them. The difference between a genre and a marketing term is that marketing terms don't necessarily dictate content. Note: I said, "not necessarily." Sometimes genre in itself can serve as a marketing term. But what I'm referring to here specifically is terms like "Young Adult."

Young Adult Fiction is any fiction that contains characters in their teens as protagonists. This does not necessarily refer to the sophistication of the writing, and does not refer to genre. It can refer to reading level--young adult tends to be written at a higher level than middle grade or early reader--but not necessarily.

Middle Grade Fiction is a marketing term for books written for ages 8 to 12.

Early Reader and Early Reader Chapter Books are books written for ages 5 to 7. These are the earliest books for young readers that have chapters in them.

And here's the kicker: Graphic Novels are actually, believe it or not, comic books. There's no real page limitation, it's just a self-contained comic book with a beginning, middle and end. In fact, even that might be stretching it. This is simply a term used by booksellers to sell any comic book that is not in periodical form. And just as comic books aren't necessarily comic, or books, graphic novels aren't necessarily novels, and just what a novel in comics form might be is a contentious debate that I don't even want to touch here.

 So there you have it. Not a genre, and not exactly a form, since a graphic novel could be just as easily the equivalent of a short story as a novel. Maybe even a poem. The term makes all of this all the more confusing to the new initiate, and has caused a lot of eye rolling from a lot of frustrated cartoonists who have long been ambivalent about the term.

How the Marketplace has Changed How We Read

There's been a recent push towards getting kids to graduate more quickly from picture books to chapter books. The storybook, the natural intermediary has gone out of vogue. There's more of a concentration on getting kids to progress developmentally than to have them simply read good books. Books with chapters and more words somehow equal a greater level of sophistication, when this isn't necessarily the case at all. Some of the best picture books have very advanced vocabulary, especially those that were written before the last decade. Picture books can be some of the greatest literature there is.

More recently word counts for picture books have diminished. 500 to 700 words has become the standard. Chapter books and Middle Grade books follow a similarly rigid format. These formats are so specific that books like Winnie the Pooh or anything at all written by Beatrice Potter are hard to market strictly on the basis of format in the current environment. It's telling that there are so many modern versions of these stories abridged to match the current industry standards. Look up Peter Rabbit and you'll find anything from board books for toddlers to picture books that contain simple variations on Potter's text, sometimes replacing Potter's illustrations with illustrations that look more contemporary. The Potter originals are thought to be a hard sell not because of how well they might hold up to a contemporary audience but because they don't fit in with a publishers Early Reader list. They're not the right word count. They can't put a "for ages 5 to 7" sticker on the front

Beatrix who?

On the plus side, the quality and sophistication of content of the young adult book has expanded dramatically, particularly in the fantasy genre due in large part to the success of Harry Potter, technically a middle grade book. When I was a kid there were few books around for the YA fantasy market as sophisticated and progressive as A Wrinkle In Time. Now I could name dozens. The appeal of these books has widened and they've even garnered a considerable adult audience. now YA, or at least YA fantasy is one of the few growing markets in fiction.

So kids, especially teens are reading, and reading more. There's a whole new generation of enthusiastic young readers. But the market place, at the same time, has become more conservative, and readers expectations have become more specific. We'll see what happens.