Twilightgate...and comics and Willingham...flipping the competitor the bird

[shadowkat]

Hee, I've been getting a kick out of Twilightgate. Also feel vindicated for predicting that this is exactly what would go down if such and such was revealed to be true. (Which was why I did not think Whedon would do it. I forget, Whedon is a television writer from a long long line of tv writers.)

What makes it even more amusing is well Willingham, who I have mixed feelings about - I rather enjoyed his work with Neil Gaiman on The Dreaming but he can be a big of a prick (not unlike Alan Moore, Frank Miller, and Eisner) , so I'm enjoying the fact that he's managed to make a big fool out of himself on the internet with people who have no idea who he is or the fact that they are basically arguing with one of the legends of the industry. Willingham is like Frank Miller - in that he writes and draws his comics, he's both an artist and a writer - which is sort of akin to writing and directing and acting in a tv show.

Go Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Willingham
He was writing comics when Whedon was in high school. I know because Whedon is my age.
Willingham is about ten to fifteen years older.

Bill Willingham (born December 1956 in Fort Belvoir, Virginia) is an American writer and artist of comics.

Willingham got his start in the late 1970s to early 1980s as a staff artist for TSR, Inc., where he illustrated a number of their role-playing game products. He was the cover artist for the AD&D Player Character Record Sheets, Against the Giants, Secret of Bone Hill, the Gamma World book Legion of Gold, and provided the back cover for In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords. He was an interior artist on White Plume Mountain, Slave Pits of the Undercity, Ghost Tower of Inverness, Secret of the Slavers Stockade, Secret of Bone Hill, Palace of the Silver Princess, Isle of Dread, In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords, the original Fiend Folio, Descent into the Depths of the Earth, Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords, Against the Giants, Queen of the Spiders, Realms of Horror, and the second and third editions of Top Secret.

He first gained attention for his 1980s comic book series Elementals published by Comico, which he both wrote and drew, however the series had trouble maintaining a consistent schedule, and Willingham's position in the industry remained spotty for many years. He contributed stories to Green Lantern and started his own independent, black-and-white comic book series Coventry which lasted only 3 issues. He also produced the pornographic series Ironwood for Eros Comix.

In the late 1990s, Willingham reestablished himself as a prolific writer. He produced the 13-issue Pantheon for Lone Star Press and wrote a pair of short novels about the modern adventures of the hero Beowulf, and a fantasy novel Down the Mysterly River published by the writer's collective, Clockwork Storybook, of which Willingham was a founding member. In the early 2000s, he began writing extensively for DC Comics, including the limited series Proposition Player, a pair of limited series about the Greek witch Thessaly from The Sandman, and most notably the popular series Fables.[1]

Willingham worked on the Robin series from 2004 to 2006, and established Shadowpact, a title spun off his Day of Vengeance limited series. He is currently writing Jack of Fables, an ongoing spin-off of his Fables series, co-written by Matthew Sturges.[2] At the 2007 Comic Con International, he announced that he would be writing Salvation Run, a mini-series about supervillains who are banished to an inhospitable prison planet.[3][4] Unfortunately, he had to hand over the writing to Sturges after two issues because of illness.[5] He will also be working on DCU: Decisions, a four-issue mini-series that deals with Green Arrow's endorsement of a political candidate[6] and, again with Sturges, is writing the Vertigo series House of Mystery[7] and DC's Justice Society of America with issue #29.[8][9]

The Elementals is the series that Neil Gaiman recently reprised a few years ago...then dropped. And Willingham and Gaiman have worked often on the same books or back to back.
This guy knows how the comics industry works.

And trust me, when I said that in the comics industry you don't take a rival book's hero and reveal him as your alleged villian, without giving them fair warning or at all. You don't interfer with their story or fanbase. And you do not suggest that you might.

I can see why he was pissed. I've never in all my years of collecting comics and this goes back to 1985, seen anyone flip the bird to another competiting group in quite this way. Heck Marvel and DC have a long standing rivalry, even got into a fracas when Marvel created Captain Marvel - which DC said was a bit too close too Superman for their liking.
And let's not forget all the writer snafus over the years - regarding royalties and control of their creations. Chris Claremount and Jim Lee left Marvel and started Wildstorm because they got fed up with how they were being treated while writing X-men - Marvel could do whatever they wanted to their creations and they had no say in it and got no credit.
And the Superman creators got robbed by DC of their royalties for Superman.

I'm sure the industry is reeling from it. Oh sure big reveals have gotten leaked all the time.
That happened before the internet. I remember when Jean Grey's return got leaked. And
the reveal on Professor Xavier as Onslaught almost did. Keeping secrets is hard when you have distributors who want to advertise to subscribers months in advance. Wizard often leaked spoilers. Wizard - is the comic magazine with all the data and best bets. Also has a pricing guide in the back for serious collectors.

If you know nothing about this medium or are new to it, you probably wondered what's the fuss? He got Jossed. Big whoop. But if you know the inner workings, back history, and how comic companies interact - it's another story. Comics is a relatively small industry and not a big money-maker. The writers and artists get relatively little credit outside their medium.
And are grossly underpaid. You don't do comics for the money, you do it for the love. They don't make a tv writer's salary.

There are rock stars of course. And they all dream of screenwriting and film. But few get the opportunity. Most try to cross over...because like I said, not the most lucrative biz on the map. And you get slamned by the mainstream media all the time.

As a woman who loves comics...it's tough, because they are a boys sport. Few gals get in.
And usually only in the underground. Willingham is actually the norm - conservative boy geek - think Warren Mears. But he does on occassion write a fantastic story. The Dreaming rocked!
I loved it.

That said, I'm really glad that Whedon flipped him the bird. Because I'm glad that the story isn't being cramped by the politics of the industry like I thought it would be. It usually is, which makes comics like tv somewhat limiting a medium. Nice to see the boundaries get stretched a bit on that score. Makes things a tad less predictable.

Comments

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Thank, flakesake makes some good points. And is correct.
If you read Ryall's Q&A closely...you will catch a few jibes that he makes at Allie.

1. He showed Allie the cover for Spike 2010 before he posted it (to, in part, demonstrate how it should be done.)

2. Oh, and in our next issue of Transformers - the villian is going to be Hellboy. (Hellboy is what made Dark Horse famous and their biggest seller.) (He's joking, but he's making a good point.)

3. And well, we thought everything we did was approved by Whedon and Fox, so it was canon...

(that's what they were told by the rightsholder. Before you can publish anything based on the original story - you have to get permission from the rightsholder. The rightsholder usually hires someone to read all the pitchs, books, etc and then read the criteria and then decide if it fits or doesn't fit. I know I applied for a job like this once at Nickloedean. It's a bizarre job.)

Ryall is being gracious because he really doesn't have the power here. Ironically this whole thing is about "power" - who has it and who does not. Willingham has no power as a freelancer, but as a gun for hire - he can go where-ever he wishes and since he has a name for other tales, which he created, he is independent. IDW needs Willingham more than Willingham needs IDW...just as IDW needs Joss Whedon's favor more than Whedon needs IDW.

IDW got the best sales in quite a while on Angel. It sold out.
Granted it may not have done better than Buffy, but it came close. And they landed a big name.

Then before their second issue, which they'd marketed and promoted heavily in a heavily marketed and promoted arc - which cost money and they invested in, Dark Horse reveals who Twilight is.

They are now scrambling to save their arc, keep fans interested, and hope they don't lose sales as a result.

Whedon and Allie had a lot of power. Their cavalier treatment of the competitor was an unwise abuse of that power, whether it was intentional or not.