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…or maybe three depending on how you count.

One day back when I was working with Jack Kirby, we were for some reason talking about Marie Severin. Jack was a great fan of many other artists and Marie was one of them. He thought she was the best caricaturist in the business and said it was a shame that she was drawing superhero comics for Marvel instead of movie and TV parodies for MAD. She should also, he said, be doing the kind of lucrative commercial art (movie posters, advertising, etc.) that Mort Drucker and Jack Davis were doing thanks to their MAD connections.

(Quick Aside: Marie worked for Bill Gaines back in the days of EC Comics as a colorist and production artist, and when Gaines pared his empire down to just MAD, she did occasional coloring jobs for them…but the number of times a female drew for MAD in the Gaines/Feldstein era is the same as the number of times you and I have done the polka on Saturn.)

I may have mentioned that to Jack that day. He definitely said it wasn't right that she was the only lady drawing for DC or Marvel. I said, "Well, except for Ramona Fradon."

Jack then asked me, "Who's Ramona Fradon?" Jack was not a big reader of comics and very little of the work Ramona had done by that time had had credits on it.

I told him about Ramona. I also rummaged through a pile Jack had of recent DC books he'd been sent until I found a couple of reprintings of Aquaman stories by Ramona. Jack looked at them and exclaimed, "She's great!" And he started pointing out interesting ways Ramona had staged what, in the hands of some other artists, would have been fairly placid drawings.

That was one of the things Jack felt was of paramount importance in drawing comics: Clear but imaginative staging. He felt a lot of artists could do one but not the other.

In the weeks that followed, we occasionally talked about having other artists perhaps take over some of the comics Jack had started for DC or wanted to start. Jack always mentioned Marie, Steve Ditko, Wally Wood, Don Heck, John Romita, Dan Spiegle, one or two others and "that lady whose work Mark showed me." He never remembered her name but he never forgot her drawing.

Okay, that's the first story about Ramona. You can count this next one as #2 or as an extension of #1…

It was at a Comic-Con International in the mid-nineties. Might have been 1995, which is when the last of these Ramona Fradon stories took place. Back in those days, I often moderated a Golden Age and/or Silver Age Panel. This is back when we had guests at the con who'd worked on comics in the so-called Golden or Silver Ages.

Ramona was at one of those panels and so was the great Al Williamson. I don't recall if they were both on the panel or if one of them was in the audience. I do recall that after the panel, Al took me aside and started asking me what comics Ramona had drawn.

I spotted nearby a pal of mine who was holding some issues of Metamorpho he'd brought to the panel to get Ramona to sign. He graciously allowed me to show them to Al…and Al did what so many artists in the business had always done: He imitated Jack Kirby — though in this case, without realized he was doing that. He said all the same things.

Then he had me introduce him to Ramona and he said all the same things again, only to her face. She was very flattered and more so later when she asked me who Al Williamson was and had me show her some of his work.

If I were a comic artist, I think I'd be pretty damn happy if either Jack Kirby or Al Williamson loved my work as much as they loved Ramona's. Even if every single other person who ever looked at one of my comics thought I stunk, I'd feel proud to impress just one of those men, let alone both.

Third story and I'm switching to the present-tense. It's the 1995 con and Ramona is an honored guest. She's still drawing the Brenda Starr newspaper strip and is not shy about telling everyone that she can't wait to be done with it. See earlier comments about how she came to prefer doing commissions rather than stories. Her contract is up soon…but not soon enough as far as she's concerned.

To clear time to attend the con, she'd rushed and handed in a large batch of strips ahead of time…and she brought her pencil roughs for them to the con to sell at her table. But there's this crisis: The finished strips she mailed off to the syndicate never arrived. Lost in the mail or something.

Whatever the reason, Ramona has to redraw them all that day. Re-creating the pencil art and the lettering is the easy part because she has those roughs. She stayed up much of the night doing that. But inking all those dailies will mean staying in her room all day. She won't be able appear on one panel. She won't be able to sit at her table making money doing sketches for her many fans.

Ramona tells me all this at the breakfast buffet at the Manchester Grand Hyatt. "After I eat, I have to back up to my room and spend the day inking," she tells me.

That does not seem right to me. I tell Ramona an idea I have and…well, let's just jump to a half-hour later at the con in the Artists' Alley section. I'm running around with the strips in pencil asking artists if they'd like to ink a panel of Ramona Fradon art.

Every single one of them says yes. Every single one.

I wish I could give you a full list. I just found an old article I wrote about this on Facebook and it mentions Paul Smith, Bob Smith, Jeff Parker, Rick Parker, George Freeman, Jim Amash, Scott Shaw!, Karl Kesel, Steve Leialoha, Colleen Doran, Trina Robbins and Al Gordon.

Others on Facebook mentioned Mark Schultz and I remember that I inked a background or two myself. In some cases, two artists sat very close together so one could ink the first panel of a strip while the other worked on the last panel on the same piece of illustration board.

I don't remember how many strips there were or how many artists inked a panel or part of a panel. I just remember we got the whole batch finished in about an hour. Ramona spent a little time retouching some odd variations on her style and thanking all who'd bailed her out.

I do remember the incredible feeling of camaraderie. Steve Leialoha just posted this on Facebook…

There was quite a crush of artists wanting to help out so Ramona could actually attend the con and not be stuck in her room. We were all long time fans and this was a great opportunity to repay her.

I also remember that among the artists who worked in the same area, an awful lot of "shop talk" about the craft of inking and how skillful Ramona's work was. If you were a beginning artist, you could have learned a lot eavesdropping on those conversations.

Lastly, I remember the one downside of the whole effort. We had more volunteers than we did panels that needed to be inked. A couple of fine artists heard what we were doing, rushed over and I had to tell them it was all taken. I believe that among the disappointed were Stan Sakai, Don Simpson and Mike Royer…

…and there was one artist who was really disappointed because he really, really wanted to ink some of Ramona's work and I hadn't thought to save him a panel. That artist was Al Williamson.

Earlier this year, a bunch of us got together and created a book called Comics For Ukraine. It's a benefit comic to benefit folks in Ukraine whose lives have been devastated by the ongoing war there and many of the stories in this book address their plight, directly or indirectly. My partner Sergio Aragonés and I contributed a new tale of Groo the Wanderer and there are stories by others whose names appear below.

Many of you already procured copies by contributing to the crowd-funding campaign. Now, those of you who didn't get in on that have a chance to buy copies and, of course, help those over there in dire need of assistance. There are NINE (9) different editions of this book, all with the same interiors, and they're all available for immediate purchase at the Zoop HQ Platform. Here are the nine versions…

1. Hardcover with Alex Ross cover — $60
2. Hardcover with Alex Ross cover signed by Ross — $100
3. Hardcover with Alex Ross cover signed by 13 creators (Anderson, Aragonés, Busiek, Chaykin, Evanier, Layman, Sakai, Sharp, Louise Simonson, Walter Simonson, Tucci, Waid, Wagner) — $175
4. Softcover with Arthur Adams cover — $40
5. Softcover with Arthur Adams cover, signed by Adams — $60
6. Softcover with Dave Johnson cover — $40
7. Softcover with Dave Johnson cover, signed by Johnson — $60
8. Softcover with Bill Sienkiewicz cover — $40
9. Softcover with Bill Sienkiewicz cover, signed by Sienkiewicz — $60

There are 15 brand new stories, each created for this book featuring well-known creations like Howard Chaykin's American Flagg, Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson's Astro City, John Layman and Rob Guillory's Chew, Matt Wagner's Grendel, Sergio Aragonés and Mark Evanier's Groo the Wanderer, Billy Tucci on The Rocketeer, Jill Thompson's Scary Godmother, Walter Simonson's Star Slammers and, Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo.

There are also original creations by Colleen Doran, Larry Hancock & Michael Cherkis, Gabe Rodriguez & Mark Waid, Liam Sharp, Emil Ferris, Louise Simonson & June Brigman, as well as single pages by pin-ups by Greg Hildebrandt, Joe Jusko, Joseph Michael Linsner, and political cartoons by Pia Guerra and Peter Kuper. The book was tirelessly and magnificently assembled by its editor, Scott Dunbier, and the money is being prudently distributed by the folks at my favorite charity, Operation USA.

Here's your chance to get a superb book for yourself and help some people in need of help. And since I know you want to immediately order a book, here's that link again. I am proud to be a part of it and you can be, too.

Yesterday, I received my contributor's copies of Comics For Ukraine, a magnificent benefit book that is raising funds to aid refugees displaced and/or harmed by the current military actions going on in that part of the world. It was the brainchild of my pal Scott Dunbier and he assembled a list of participants so impressive that most people can even overlook that I am one of them. Here's that list…

Alex Ross, Arthur Adams, Dave Johnson, Brent Anderson, Sergio Aragonés, June Brigman, Kurt Busiek, Howard Chaykin, Michael Cherkas, Colleen Doran, Emil Ferris, Pia Guerra, Rob Guillory, Larry Hancock, Greg Hildebrant, Dave Johnson, Joe Jusko, Peter Kuper, John Layman, Joseph Michael Linsner, Gabriel Rodriguez, Alex Ross, Stan Sakai, Liam Sharp, Bill Sienkiewicz, Louise Simonson, Walter Simonson, Jill Thompson, Billy Tucci, Matt Wagner, Mark Waid, Yours Truly and more.

Sergio and I — with the graciously also-donated lettering of Stan Sakai and coloring of Tom Luth — produced a new, 8-page Groo story which is appearing nowhere else.  (Well, let me amend that a bit: Nowhere else for the foreseeable future.  I can't promise it won't be reprinted somewhere decades from now.)

A few copies of this handsome volume were available at Comic-Con last July and were snatched up immediately.  The bulk of the advance orders are now being delivered and if you arranged for one, you're going to be very happy with your purchase.  If you didn't order one and you want to, that's not possible right this minute but I should have a link for you in a couple of weeks.

To repeat something I said before here: One of the many reasons I'm excited about the project is that every cent of profit is being placed in the capable hands of my favorite charity, Operation USA, to direct to the points where it'll do the most good. You may have seen me write about Operation USA on this site and a little ad for it has always been in my right-hand margin here. It's the main place I send my money when I want to see it help people in need and I would remind you that you don't have to just buy the book to get funds to them. You can send them whatever you can spare right this minute. Here — I'll even give you a nice, clickable banner…

I may be wrong but it seemed like at one point, the end of the line to meet Sergio and to get him to sign something was somewhere in South Carolina. It was at the very least in some other Zip Code. I don't think he got to leave his table and see some of the convention so this post is for him…

Sergio, you missed wandering the halls and seeing a high percentage of tables not manned by dealers selling books but by other artists and writers selling and signing their wares. I can't recall another convention where the "Artists Alley" part so dwarfed the "Sell Comics" part. If you were there to fill in your collection, there was plenty of the latter. But if you mainly wanted to meet creators and get them to write their names on their creations, you'd come to the right place.

I really enjoyed roaming the premises talking with folks I knew, by reputation if not by prior contact. Among them were Klaus Janson, Steve Saffel, Kevin Nowlan, Tom Grummett, Andy Hirsch, Neal Adams, Colleen Doran, Athena Finger, Keith Tucker, Jerry Ordway, Mike Royer, Billy Tucci, Charles Vess, Joe Giella, Craig Yoe, John Beatty, Steve Rowe and I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot of people…like, say, Don Rosa. That's Don and me in the photo below and I was a lot happier throughout my time at Heroes Con than I appear to be in the picture.

I guess I judge conventions largely on their mood. The mood at Heroes Con seemed very, very pleasant and friendly, making it a great place to spend two days. Ringmaster Shelton Drum and his staff do a great job of making not just folks like you and me feel welcome, Sergio. Seemed to me that everyone who walked in the door felt welcome. And like you, I really enjoyed that barbecue last night at Shelton's store.

Lastly and speaking of food: I learned that the on-the-bone chicken at Bojangles Fried Chicken is really, really good and the Chicken Tenders, coated with too much batter and spice, are not. This will be handy to know any time I am in North Carolina because the state seems to have more Bojangles than people. But it's been a great trip, making me very sorry we missed the first day of it. Maybe next time…

Third one of these this year.  For those of you who are new to this blog: When I get so burdened with deadlines that I don't expect to be able to post much for a day or three, I put up one of these nifty graphics to indicate a few speed bumps for the time being.  I dunno why I chose Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup…some connect to "comfort food," I guess.  It signals to you to explore the remote possibility that there's something else on the Internet for you to read besides my blog.  Here are a few thoughts though before I focus on the writing that allegedly pays…

Hey, speaking of getting paid, artist Colleen Doran has a good discussion going about what kind of income one can reasonably expect from the profession of drawing pictures.  Of course, it depends a lot at how good you are at drawing those pictures and maybe on how good you are at marketing them.  But go read what she and her commenters have to say.  I really like that kind of discussion as opposed to the "you can achieve anything if you're determined enough" nonsense that I think does much harm to newcomers. If that worked, I would have married Mary Tyler Moore when I was twelve years old.

I said here that I was trying to write less about Donald Trump so I would think less about Donald Trump.  It may not look like I'm succeeding but oh yes, I am, people!  I could write 7-10 times a day about how awful I think this man is for the country.  Any day I can hold it down to two or three, I'm doing well.  I just saw a whole mess o' tweets from unabashed racists and Jew-haters who are doing happy dances and I'm resisting the urge to write about how being on the same side as certain people means you really need to question your perceptions.  I'm still shaken whenever I agree with Dick Cheney.

I will be back here at a normal posting pace when things clear up and scripts are sent.

I only plug one Kickstarter project about every 3-4 months. This is the only one 'til April.

Last year, my pal Jackie Estrada successfully Kickstarted her book, Comic Book People, a collection of photos she'd taken of folks at comic book conventions in the seventies and eighties. Despite the fact that I was among them, folks ponied up the money, the book was published and from what I can tell, everyone liked it. If you didn't get one, you can now order a copy on Amazon.

Now, she's back with Comic Book People 2. This is currently on Kickstarter, looking for funding and you oughta hustle over there and pledge the bucks necessary to get your own copy. This one covers the nineties, an exciting time in comics…and Jackie's camera and keen eye were around to capture its star players.

Among those you'll find in this volume are Will Eisner, Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Vin Sullivan, Paul Norris, Martin Nodell, Chad Grothkopf, Al Williamson, Sheldon Moldoff, Bob Kane, Gene Colan, Marie Severin, Irwin Hasen, Harry Lampert, Ric Estrada, Bill Ward, Ramona Fradon, Bob Haney, Nick Cardy, Paul S. Newman, Dan Barry, Carmine Infantino, John Buscema, Frank Frazetta, Neil Gaiman, George Perez, Grant Morrison, Garth Ennis, Peter David, John Byrne, Chris Claremont, Kevin Eastman, Mark Waid, Alex Ross, Dave McKean, Frank Miller, Todd McFarlane, Rob Liefeld, Dave Sim, Jeff Smith, Terry Moore, Linda Medley, Billy Tucci, Colleen Doran, David Lapham, Carla Speed McNeil, James Kochalka, Chris Ware, Dean Haspiel, Evan Dorkin, Sarah Dyer, Donna Barr, Shannon Wheeler, Scott McCloud, Paul Pope, Roberta Gregory and many more. That's Dan Clowes and Chester Brown in the above sample photo.

If many of those names are familiar to you, you probably want a copy. I sure do. Go pledge and make this book a reality.

Another sad loss for those of us who love great comic book creators of the past. Nick Cardy died this evening from congestive heart failure. He turned 93 a few weeks ago.

Nicholas Viscardi was born October 20, 1920 so he was 18 when he went to work for Will Eisner's studio in the dawn of comics. He'd studied at the Art Students League and Eisner always said that when Nick walked in with his samples, he was an instant hire. His drawing was that good. He did many jobs for Eisner but was probably best known for drawing and usually writing the Lady Luck feature that ran as a back-up in Eisner's famous newspaper comic sections of The Spirit. Nick signed some of his early works "Nick Cardi" before settling down to Cardy.

He served in World War II and won two Purple Hearts for injuries which, he would later joke, were nothing compared to what he endured working for some editors. Once home from the war, he worked in advertising and in newspaper comics (including a stint illustrating the Tarzan daily) before he began working in 1950 for DC Comics, an association that would last twenty-five years. His artistry was seen in dozens of different comics but he's probably best remembered for a long stint drawing Aquaman and shorter but memorable runs on Teen Titans and a wonderful western comic called Bat Lash. In the early seventies, DC used him as one of their main cover artists across most of the line. He drew unusually handsome heroes and extraordinarily attractive women, and you could tell the work was always done with great care and pride.

Nick later said he left comics because he was bored with the form and eager to try new areas and to paint. Some of us recall his departure as being due to business disputes he later chose to forget. Whatever the reason, he went back to "Cardi" and enjoyed great success as a commercial artist, painting posters (and not necessarily the only ones) for many hit movies including Movie Movie, California Suite and Apocalypse Now. For a long time, he shunned comic books but was eventually lured back into the field to do a few covers.

He was also lured onto the convention circuit, an honor he had long declined. In 1998, after refusing for years, Nick finally agreed to be a Guest of Honor at the Comic-Con International in San Diego. Nervously, he set down all sorts of conditions: His table had to be next to the table of his friend, Colleen Doran; he had to be free to flee the autograph area if the crowds got to him, etc. He balked at doing a panel/interview but finally agreed on the condition that others would be up there with him so they could talk if he froze in front of the audience. I was his interrogator and I brought Colleen, Sergio Aragonés and Marv Wolfman up there with him…needlessly, it turned out. Once Nick got to talking, you couldn't shut him up and the audience loved every word he said. Partial transcripts of that panel may be read here and here.

Nick had the best time in San Diego that year. He always had a long line of folks eager to meet him and to thank him for all the great comics and a lot of those who queued up were top professionals who thanked him for the inspiration. He was the kind of man who cried if you told him you loved his tie so there were a lot of happy tears that weekend. Thereafter, he attended San Diego and other conventions whenever his health and budget would allow. He called me to chat every month or two and when he did, I always knew I'd be on the phone for at least an hour and that I'd love every minute of it. Those who appreciate fine comic art will treasure his work forever…and those of us who knew him will never forget that dear, sweet man.

Jeff Koval writes…

The problem I'm running into is that the web seems to be overflowing with "advice" and "jobs" sites that I don't consider particularly trustworthy. It really seems like the majority of these sites are spit out just to grab domain names. Perhaps most of them are just completely fabricated web garbage. Anyway, there's a lot of them.

It's the same with books on the subject. I'm just not sure which ones are insightful and which ones were tossed off for a quick buck. Not to mention fake reviews…there's really all kinds of ways to be skeptical and/or paranoid.

Can you recommend any good websites or guides that would be useful for someone like me who really just needs to figure out a way into that world? Also, advice in general would be welcome. I seem to remember you posting about freelancing in the past, so I apologize if these questions seem redundant to you.

I've seen very few websites that offer anything that strikes me as good advice for the world of freelance writing. There are a few, like those of my friends Lee Goldberg and Colleen Doran, that will sometimes warn you about the many scams that are out there to get you to work for free…or even to pay them instead of them paying you. A lot of careers are derailed because a wanna-be leads with his or her heart, believes a phony opportunity is real and gets screwed over.

I haven't seen any books that are that helpful. There may be some but I haven't seen them.

Finding a way into the world of freelance writing varies a lot depending on what you want to write, where you're starting…and to some degree, what your expectations are. My expectation when I started at age 17 was to be a writer and darn near nothing else for the rest of my life…and so far, with my 61st birthday a month away, I've managed it. I've been an editor, a producer, a voice director, a cartoonist and even on one or two frightening occasions, a performer. Those are little bonus titles that are largely meaningless to me, credits I sometimes forego. What matters to me is being a writer. I suspect that commitment has had a lot to do with continued employment. I kinda had to succeed to some extent because I was so much less competent at other things…

…and also because I liked writing. Always have, always will. To me, the requirement to be a professional writer is that you love it enough that no matter what happens in your life, you still want to sit down and write for many hours each day. I occasionally moan at the circumstances under which I must write — some deadlines, certain restrictions, etc. — but when I hear writers complain about the sheer necessity of dragging themselves to the keyboard to write, I think their real problem is they're in the wrong profession. When people ask me, as they do, how I manage to come up with so much content on this weblog, I tell them pure and simple: I like doing it. It's writing and the subject matter is always a recess from whatever people are paying me to write that week.

As a writer, you have to write. And as a freelancer, you have to accept the sporadic, short-term nature of your profession. I know freelancers who whine that nothing is steady. Well, it's not supposed to be steady. That's why it's called freelancing, dum dum.

In the 44 years I've been doing it, I've never really been out of work. I've also never had a gig that I felt reasonably certain would be there a year — more often, six months — down the line. And as an important adjunct to that, I've never had a time when 100% or even 75% of my income came wholly from one source. I'm always doing three or more things at a time and talking to ten more about projects in the future. (A rough rule of thumb for me is that if I'm talking to ten people about things I might write soon, I know that five are very remote possibilities and that of the remaining five, one is likely to happen, two at the most.) I have also never been exclusive to any company or buyer.

Very little of that is a brag. Quite the opposite, I envy so much about people who have a job they love and it's secure and they can be reasonably certain that they can be doing it ten years from now if they want. I just accept that I've selected a career where that kind of thing rarely happens.

I think you need to accept it. I had a friend years ago who was a pretty good writer. At some point, because he married young and fathered not long after, he took a staff job at a manufacturing firm writing technical manuals and such. It was boring, unchallenging work but it was also the kind of company where they hire you and you stay there until half past your retirement party.

If you want. After ten or fifteen years there, he decided he didn't want.

He felt he was neglecting a large part of himself. He was a creative writer who was not doing creative writing. He tried to bat out a novel or maybe some short stories in his spare time but that didn't work. He was the kind of guy who could only manage X number of hours per week writing and the job just consumed too much of X.

Finally, when his daughter went off to college and he realized he had a nice cushion in the bank, he decided he had to go for it. He had to try to become the kind of writer he believed in his soul he should be. He quit the tech-writing job and tried freelance writing of a more creative nature.

Well aware it can take a while to get established, he had no expectations of immediate success…which was good because he didn't have any. But he had some non-immediate success. Many who try this sell nothing. Absolutely nothing. He sold something…and then another something and then a few more somethings…articles, fillers, a couple of comic book scripts. His income did not equal what he made as a technical writer but it was closing in on that level.

And then one day, he gave up and went back to the manufacturing firm. It just drove him too crazy, he said, to freelance. He lived with a constant tightness in his stomach, fretting that each piece wouldn't sell or that each assignment would be his last from a given buyer. He needed stability in his life more than he needed to pursue his muse. I don't fault him one bit for that. He had to do what he had to do.

There's an old story about Bert Lahr, the great comedian. He opened on Broadway in a play called The Beauty Part and it was a triumph. Opening night, the critics were standing and cheering. A gent I knew named Jonathan Lucas told me this story. He told me he was there for the opening and that he rushed backstage and said to Lahr, whom he knew, "It's a smash, Bert! It'll run for three years!"

To which Lahr replied, sourly, "Yeah, but what do I do then?"

I can't guarantee this story is true. For one thing, after Jonathan told it to me, I saw it cited in a couple of books and magazines with other folks claiming they'd rushed backstage and said what Jonathan said he'd said to the Cowardly Lion guy.

But in every telling, Lahr's line was the same…and it's exactly how you can't think if you want to be a freelancer. You need to recognize the on again/off again nature of what we do. It drove my friend crazy to not know what he'd be writing next month and how much, if anything, he'd make. To get the knot out of his tummy, he had to go back to writing tech manuals. As far as I know, he's still at it and probably better off there. Just as not everyone was made to work 9-to-5 in an office, not everyone was made to work at home in their jammies, keeping their own hours.

This is really the best advice I can give someone who wants to be a freelancer and it's not all that different from what I tell someone who wants to be an actor or a dancer or a director or any job where you go from gig to gig. It's important to understand the unpredictable rhythms of the work and that you're signing on to be a wandering nomad. And it can really help if you can learn to appreciate and even be amused by it. If you can't, there are other vocations and maybe you'd be happier in one of them.

The exquisite Colleen Doran has an article up over on The Hill, which is a Congress-oriented newspaper. Her piece is about the damage that online piracy does to folks like her who are trying to make their livings creating comic books. She's absolutely right, though I don't expect a lot of the pirates or their patrons to get that. Some of them have the notion/rationale that it's like ripping-off a Beatles tune. Paul McCartney will never miss the lost income. And if Colleen had Paul's money, she probably wouldn't but that wouldn't make it right, either. There's also what I call the Hotel Towel Excuse, derived from those who think it's okay to take home a couple of fluffy ones from the Marriott because that's presumed in your bill. They figure the average person steals $8 worth of towels so they charge you $8 more. That ain't true nor are comic books priced with the expectation that you might just scan your copy and give it away free to a hundred thousand people.

Or some of them think (and these are the real annoying ones, heaping insult on injury) that they're doing you a favor of some sort to bootleg your work so that it reaches a wider audience. "It's good promotion," they'll say. That's a dubious premise but even if it is good promotion, we should be the ones deciding how and when our work will be given out as free samples. I've also seen folks with an attitude that roughly goes: "Anyone who is lucky enough to work in comics shouldn't complain about not making enough money." No rebuttal necessary.

Obviously, I have no idea how or if piracy can be stopped. The response by those who are swindled this way is usually to either pretend it isn't happening or to decide that they need to beat the pirates to the marketplace, offering legal, paid downloads before the buccaneers can pass out their free ones. I'm not sure that isn't like preventing burglars from entering your house by leaving all your valuables out on the front porch for them. At the very least though, people who steal ought to be made aware that they're stealing…and that while they may not put DC or Marvel out of business that way — especially since neither of those companies is really in the business of publishing comic books these days — they are hurting folks like Colleen who do depend on actual sales of comics.

My post here a week or so ago about meeting deadlines evoked a great deal of response…and a few curious ones. I received one vituperative message from a comic book writer I barely know who thought (a) I was lecturing him in particular and (b) I was advising all to "Hand in crap if you have to but meet the deadline." I dunno where he got any of that. He also seemed to think I was a devout reader, and therefore admirer or his work. Wrong again. I don't think I've ever read anything the guy's written…and if he writes like he reads, I'm not missing much.

I also got an odd message from someone who thought I was just echoing what publishers and editors and producers always tell writers because it serves the interests of Management. Well, yes, it probably does serve their interests when the work is in on time. The point I was trying to make is that it serves the writer's interests, as well. If you wish to get offered more opportunities — and if you wish to have more clout and control on the projects you do undertake — get the damned pages in on time. If you're not going to do it for those who pay you or collaborate with you, do it for your own benefit…because there's plenty.

The wondrous Colleen Doran wasn't wild about my comparison between a writer (or artist) meeting deadlines and Sir Laurence Olivier always being ready to go on stage when the curtain goes up. She wrote, "It is one thing to show up and perform in a play that runs two hours. It is another thing to draw the cast of thousands the writer gave you to draw in the same time frame as a pinup." She's right to some extent and I should have noted that meeting deadlines may also involve saying, of some assignment, "Sorry…it's not humanly possible for me to get that piece of work done in the allotted time." Of course, the time to say that is before you agree to do it in the allotted time.

One of the things I've learned about time management, not just in work but in life, is that it's important to develop a realistic sense of how long things take, especially if you back-time. Back-timing (and this can be dangerous) means that you decide you can write the script, which is due on the 10th, in two days…and then you put indulgences or other, less time-sensitive tasks ahead of it and don't start 'til the 8th. Even if you can probably write it in two days, it can be lethal to count on that. What if it does take longer? Or what if your power's out for much of those two days or a relative dies or you get the flu? I used to have this colorful notion that I did my best work under pressure; that it might even result in a better script if I trapped myself into having to write it at the last minute. It wasn't always fatal but it often screwed up my life to make myself a prisoner of a deadline.

The only person I ever knew who seemed good at back-timing his life was Dick Clark. I worked for him (and as a producer, even hired him once) back in the eighties. If you said to Dick, "We need you on the set, ready to shoot at Noon," Dick would say — and this is not me exaggerating for effect — "Okay, that means I'll need to hit wardrobe at 11:53, which means I'll need to be at hair and makeup at 11:41, which means I'll have to get to the studio at 11:35, so I'll leave Malibu at 11:06." And somehow, don't ask me how, he'd leave his home at Malibu at 11:06 and walk onto the set at 11:59, ready to shoot.

He was never late. Traffic didn't stop him. Mechanical failure didn't stop him. One year, he wanted to me to fly back to New York with him to assist with the live broadcast from Times Square on New Year's Eve. I wound up not doing it but I saw the itinerary and it was scary, especially when you considered that there was no backup plan if he wasn't there on time. The rest of the show was already pretaped, with its hosts saying, "Let's cut to our pal Dick Clark in Times Square." Then they left a hole which had to be filled. (When that was taped, it was October…and Dick, in his capacity as producer, was standing near the camera in that studio.)

You'd think that, since he absolutely had to be there at the Midnight Hour and since Times Square and the surrounding streets can get a wee bit congested the last day of the year — to say nothing of the likelihood of snow — he'd go to New York a few days early and check into a hotel, preferably the one with the rooftop from which he'd be broadcasting to ring in the new. Maybe he did that some years but the year he asked me to go, we would have been flying back at the last possible minute with only a little pad in the schedule for contingencies. And somehow, we would have made it because he was Dick Clark.

Alas, none of us is Dick Clark. (And even more alas is that these days, Dick Clark isn't Dick Clark.) We mortals, mere as we are, must deal with the laws of space, time and physics. We can't plan our lives in that manner…as I learned the hard way when being around Dick for a time caused me to try. There are times when for reasons beyond my control, I do have to get something written at the last minute. But to the extent I can, I really (really, really) try not to get into that situation. It harms me and it can also harm the work.

I always remember a story a writer friend told me. For a brief time, he dated a stunning young lady who had once folded-out in the center of Playboy. The first date ended with a polite kiss. The second ended with a less polite kiss. The third ended with serious necking and he was pretty sure the fourth and all subsequent ones would climax with climax. Another alas: There was no fourth date. She was called to Europe for a modelling assignment and then she got involved with someone else and he got involved with someone else and…well, that was it.

A few years later, he was no longer involved with that someone else or with anyone. He was writing a cartoon show and had blown the last few deadlines. He was given a last chance and basically told that if this one wasn't in on time, he could forget about ever writing this show — or any show — ever again. The studio was going to send a messenger to his home Friday evening at 6 PM. If he did not hand that messenger a completed script, the career was over. It would be time to go apply for a job putting Jack Sauce on Jackburgers at Jack-in-the-Box.

You probably see where this is going…

Despite all that was on the line, he put off starting work on the script so he could go to dinner with friends, put it off so he could work on the boat he owned (and would lose if the assignment wasn't in), put it off for umpteen reasons. He finally buckled down on Thursday evening and worked all through the night.

By Noon the next day, he had it about two-thirds written and figured that he would just barely finish by the time the messenger showed at six. That was when the phone rang.

You guessed it. It was Miss April — or whatever month she was — calling from a hotel out by the airport. She described to my friend what little she was wearing and announced, "I have five hours before I have to leave for a year-long job in Japan. I've been thinking about you and about that date we never had. And if you can get out here right away…"

I'll spare you the graphic details of the offering. I'll even spare you the description of my friend weeping as he told me the tale, lower lip all atremble. The story had a double-sad ending because not only did he have to say no to the young lady but he didn't get the script done by 6. And though his career didn't exactly end, employment at that studio did.

I'll probably write more on this topic in the next week or so. I want to emphasize how being late not only destroys careers, it can also injure the work. Right now though, I have to get back to work on a script. It's not due for a while and even though I won't be getting any offers like my friend received, I don't want to put it off until the deadline's looming. After all, I'm not Dick Clark.