G.I. Joe Classified Series

docsilence said:
I joke that when the books first came out I wanted a movie deal to be famous, met a bunch of authors who had movie deals who still needed day jobs (I actually bought dinner for a guy who is one of King's favorite horror authors and has had at least two books turned into movies but still teaches high school math because he needs the steady work), and have rapidly downgraded my dreams of fortune from "fame," to "donate to a no-kill shelter and save senior abandoned cats and dogs, to "be able to afford to retire before I'm dead" and now it's just "upgrade the house so I can have another room for my action figure collection and half-bath"

I've had a few bites but nothing worthwhile. I need a new agent.
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From the indie comic book creator trenches I salute you. This is absolutely the way my dreams have changed.
 
PantherCult said:
This is fair... and makes me appreciate it more.

So as I'm customizing my second Darklon into something else... mostly repaint, swap the shoulder pad to the other side, removed the bootop bandolier, weapons swap...
I'm trying to think of a unique name for him... wanted something that fit the metal mask with the tongue out... Metalhead - an obvious one - is already taken. Then I thought Death Metal would be good, but had an itchy feeling about that and sure enough... Death Metal has been used too - for a kick ass Dreadnok character I would love a figure of BTW. So now I'm trying to come up with something that works... I guess Doom Metal and Black Metal are still available... Iron Mask is available with a classic Dumas call back, a possible Destro link (apparently he's descended from the character Dumas based his book on in the lore) while also tying thematically to the Iron Grenadiers...

nomenclature is important in these things... just ask Big Lob
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It's funny, my brain immediately went to images I've seen of demons, devils, and gargoyles with their tongue lolling out but I can't find the one I'm thinking of right now. A lot of times oni masks will have a tongue hanging out, too. I'm sure there's historical reason for it. Maybe Oni for his name? Gargoyle? Brimstone?

Ashtalon said:
Next thing you know, we'll have a Social Media Operator for the Joes. Named...Livestream? Didn't they have something silly like that in a recent comic?
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This immediately made me think of Screwball from Marvel and had traumatic flashbacks to the first Spidey Playstation game. If Livestream exists, they work for COBRA for SURE.

Ru1977 said:
You downgraded mine as well! Not really, I figured out early on in writing school I am not mainstreamish.
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Sorry I've ruined your dreams. Eleven years as a working author and while I would never take back anything I've done, if you want a job that is basically getting punched in the face then in the balls repeatedly over and over again til you quit or die, it's publishing.

JakeEkiss said:
From the indie comic book creator trenches I salute you. This is absolutely the way my dreams have changed.
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My main audience overlaps with comics readers primarily so I mostly work comic cons instead of book events for marketing, and man, you guys have it even harder than authors. If publishing is a meat grinder, comics is a WWI No Man's Zone.
 
docsilence said:
Sorry I've ruined your dreams
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You really didn't. I think by the time we started chatting, I'd gotten a couple hundred literary agent rejections, so I was already coming toward the path I'm on now. I think a lot of times I'll ask you something I kinda already know and just need you to sway me the right way.
 
docsilence said:
It's funny, my brain immediately went to images I've seen of demons, devils, and gargoyles with their tongue lolling out but I can't find the one I'm thinking of right now. A lot of times oni masks will have a tongue hanging out, too. I'm sure there's historical reason for it. Maybe Oni for his name? Gargoyle? Brimstone?
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Ooh... Brimstone has a fun ring to it... that might work. It also feels like it fits with the whole grenadier vibe - grenades, bombs, brimstone... See always pays to go to a guy who writes for a living for something like this...
 
docsilence said:
My main audience overlaps with comics readers primarily so I mostly work comic cons instead of book events for marketing, and man, you guys have it even harder than authors. If publishing is a meat grinder, comics is a WWI No Man's Zone.
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Yeah, you're not wrong. I think video-games are almost as abusive as an artistic industry, but at least there you can get paid real money occassionally. Animators I think have it worse, at least the overseas ones. But it's a real race to the bottom across most creative fields these days. Bleak out there. I'm glad I have a day job running a university makerspace. It's art adjacent (though I am almost entirely admin at this point) but at least I can afford bills and I've got holidays and a shot at retirement. And occassionally I get to play with the toys (laser cutters are cool).
 
As an aside I was fiddling with my Darklon and happened to have a head from the retro Marvel Legends Lizard lying nearby and I'll be darned if that head doesn't look really good on that body. Now I'm going to figure out how to make a Cobra affiliated Lizard man
 
Ru1977 said:
You really didn't. I think by the time we started chatting, I'd gotten a couple hundred literary agent rejections, so I was already coming toward the path I'm on now. I think a lot of times I'll ask you something I kinda already know and just need you to sway me the right way.
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When this place blows up in popularity and we've got all kinds of sponsorships rolling in, @TheSameIdiot is going to start a publishing wing: Articulating Thoughts, and we'll ALL get published.
 
Self publishing on Amazon is pretty easy. Getting the book done is the hard part for most people. For me it's the marketing. Don't care for it.
 
It took me a solid five minutes to remember "that word for the smell of sulfur that is WAY WAY COOLER than 'sulfur.'" I"m honestly surprised there isn't already someone working for Destro named Brimstone. Which is, for sure, a fricken GREAT word.

JakeEkiss said:
Yeah, you're not wrong. I think video-games are almost as abusive as an artistic industry, but at least there you can get paid real money occassionally. Animators I think have it worse, at least the overseas ones. But it's a real race to the bottom across most creative fields these days. Bleak out there. I'm glad I have a day job running a university makerspace. It's art adjacent (though I am almost entirely admin at this point) but at least I can afford bills and I've got holidays and a shot at retirement. And occassionally I get to play with the toys (laser cutters are cool).
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Yeah, I've got friends who did time in video games and they were like "until they cut my throat during layoffs they at least PAID well!" My book royalties are, like most Z-list authors, unreliable, so I split time between working for a small city as a content writer and freelancing in healthcare and tech. The city stuff makes me happy though--it's a sanctuary city so I can at least say ONE of my jobs involves working for the good guys.
Damien said:
When this place blows up in popularity and we've got all kinds of sponsorships rolling in, @TheSameIdiot is going to start a publishing wing: Articulating Thoughts, and we'll ALL get published.
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A year or two back I was invited to write a story for an anthology that had a dozen WAY MORE IMPRESSIVE writers attached to it (Colleen Doran illustrated it and I almost had a stroke when I found out, been a fan of hers for decades) and it was so much fun my life's goal is to do well enough myself that I can put together a group of writers and publish anthologies full of writers I just *like* and want to work with. The guy in charge has done work for Marvel and DC and was just like: hey Hachette, here's thirteen writers I respect, let's pay them to tell some stories and somehow they agreed to it.
Ru1977 said:
Self publishing on Amazon is pretty easy. Getting the book done is the hard part for most people. For me it's the marketing. Don't care for it.
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Whenever I teach a writing class the one piece of advice I always say is enjoy the writing because that's the fun part. Later you have to MARKET the thing. And honestly, unless you're a top five author in your genre, you're doing your own marketing even if you're with a big New York or London publisher. They abandon you HARD if you're not the darling of the year. It's a bloodbath.
 
God I hope this ends up being true:

https://bleedingcool.com/tv/gossip-robert-kirkman-has-sold-a-transformers-gi-joe-cartoon-series/

I guess if this ends up being true we might hear something at SDCC.

Not only would it mean Joe media (outside of comics), but it would be based on the Energon Universe and be done by Skybound. Considering how great of a job they did adapting Invincible for animation on Amazon I would be ecstatic if they could pull off the same for Joe (and Transformers).
 
docsilence said:
Yeah, I've got friends who did time in video games and they were like "until they cut my throat during layoffs they at least PAID well!" My book royalties are, like most Z-list authors, unreliable, so I split time between working for a small city as a content writer and freelancing in healthcare and tech. The city stuff makes me happy though--it's a sanctuary city so I can at least say ONE of my jobs involves working for the good guys.
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Yeah, that's how I feel working inside a makerspace that's inside a library inside a liberal arts college. Like, really putting all my chips behind "learning shit is important actually and expertise is not overrated". And thankfully it means that day-to-day I'm insulated from a lot of the stuff I'd otherwise need to deal with in a deep red state.
 
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