I don't know what I'm talking about.

Today is National Squirrel Appreciation Day here in the States, and to celebrate, I've done some fan art. Specifically, this is my vision Kit Baxter, aka the Flying Squirrel, the scrappy crime-fighting partner of the Red Panda. Who is the Red Panda, you ask? Well, the Red Panda is the brainchild of Toronto citizen, Gregg Taylor, who has taken it upon himself to found Decoder Ring Theatre, a website devoted to recreating the pulp radio shows of yore.

Sunday morning, shortly after I posted the last conversation, Thomas J. Foster replied one more time. The tone of the e-mail was civil and thoughtful and lacked the beautiful, colorful language of his earlier missives. In it, to his credit, he takes the time to acknowledge the source of my ill will. But let’s let him speak for himself. Here you go, the last word from Thomas J. Foster:

“I do now finally understand your point, Jeremiah. However, I do feel there is a gigantic piece of the puzzle missing from the table here. It may change your mind, it may not, and your are right to suppose that it doesn't matter.

First of all, I understand your desire to be acknowledged as a part of what's happened. You would deserve it far more than Bill McCoy, the first artist to work on the project. You were far more talented, interested, and dedicated to the overall scope and purpose of the comic.

”When we broke ways (in a fevered period when we did believe the Book had a chance of catching a ride on the zeitgeist) we employed several artists in an effort to remain timely. Ultimately we fell into a happy arrangement with Takis Simon (now the artist for the comic for five years). I suppose that our bad feelings between each other denied us a mutual dialog about what that meant and has helped create this emotional schism. We wanted to to whatever we could to help Takis creatively. That meant, to him and to us, allowing him to draw the book His way, to give him a chance to brand the book himself, as much as time and money allowed. We let him redo issues #1 and #2 (even #3, but that's a much longer story). Given unlimited resources, we would have him redraw #4 and #5, in order to satisfy the concept of artistic unity and artistic ego. I hope you understand that we would have understood your feelings if we'd stayed together, yet had an issue drawn by an outside artist. It's like a marriage, and the wife is never going to like who you slept with in the past. I am sorry to say it, but to Takis (and to us, fairly) you were and are, the ex.

“Please know that, beyond surface-type angry reactions to unfair forum posts, Ron and I hold no ill will towards you. It was what it was. Hopefully we can agree to denigrate each other no longer in public forums. Perhaps further communication can help to fill the larger picture, which to me is one of artists trying, always trying, to do the best work they can and finding the best situation for their efforts to shine.

One last note for this missive: Ron and I are under no delusion that Warner Brothers deliberately stole our concepts. However, our "harping" has a right and a place. The design for our first collection of issues, from logo to font to tagline has been "in the market" (such as the case may be; it is or was on shelves of comic book stores from New Jersey to California) since 2005. For a major movie company to launch an ad campaign (largely targeting comic book fans) with such a direct combination of similarities might be coincidental, but it is certainly lazy and technically theft. If anything, we deserve some publicity from this 'stunt'.

“Best,
“Thomas”

That’s their last word. Mine is "hindsight." See, early on in our partnership, they had informed me that I was the second Book of Jesse artist. The original, they had told me disparagingly, couldn't work at the pace they demanded. Looking on it now, that kind of thing is all-too-familiar, and nowhere is that more evident than is his marriage/dating allegory. To expand on this (and thus run the risk of being attacked by a facebook group), think to back when you were dating, and you meet someone who complains bitterly about an ex or two, and then months or years later, you're the ex they're complaining bitterly to someone about. Seeing them so effusively gaga about their current significant other (Takis Simon) truly is heartbreaking. "What about all the good times," I ask, "when you said you loved my drawings? Did out time together mean nothing?"

At the end of the day all of this does mean nothing. Any last scrap of my art will have been removed from their site, and no doubt by now I am no longer on the Third Party Politics mailing list, so I won't have to delete anymore of their messages. If Thomas’s sudden empathy extends beyond the reach of a private e-mail and into a brief acknowledgement on the website, I’ll never know because I have no intention of visiting their page again. Instead, I will return to my life full of my own challenges, and Ron and Thomas will return to their own corner of the universe where their genius is so absolute that the Warner Brothers and the Hughes Brothers (and one day, god willing, maybe even the Wachowski Brothers) blatantly rip them off because they are so darned brilliant with their eighteen issues of their comic that they've published over the past six years. (Which, subtracting six months for the time I worked on the book, comes out to about one comic for every three and a third months, which is, amusingly enough, the rate at which I, the infamous deadline-flaunter, produced. Enjoy that victory there, guys.)

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "If this means nothing, then why has Jeremiah written so much about it this past couple of weeks? Why did he register at Bleeding Cool just so he could visit an insignificant forum and leave a pointless comment that said, essentially, 'Ditto.' And if it truly means nothing at all, then why did he take the time to calculate the average length of time between issues?"

I did that last bit because it was childish and snarky and made me feel really fucking smug. The rest was inspired by the sheer audacity of their campaign which, if you read the early comments in the aforementioned forum, wasn't particularly convincing. And, as you can read for yourself, the whole campaign was really as cynical and self-promoting as I had initially thought it was.

Most importantly, I feel I should probably mention that this isn’t dating or marriage, and I’m not an ex. I was an employee who lived and breathed their company for over six months, only to be kicked to the curb and ignored as soon as the opportunity presented itself. For all their self-righteousness about being the little guy who hates big-business, they have more in common with Time-Warner than they think: they are both so viciously overprotective of what's theirs that they are completely blind to the fact that they would not have theirs without the people who gave them a hand; all the while hiding behind the legality of their actions. In short, they, like the red-state America they routinely mock, don't believe in sharing. The only difference between Third Party Politics and Time-Warner is that Time-Warner makes a profit.

So fuck you, Third Party Politics, and fuck your condescending bullshit.

Let me state one final time, in writing, that they technically owe me nothing. All of the characters in the Book of Jesse are the legal and intellectual property of Ronald Morgan and Thomas J. Foster. They created everything and deserve all of the credit for making their dream a reality, albeit a distorted reality where they can pretend that a mediocre artist didn't spend six months busting his ass and doing his best work for almost no guarantee of payment. Not that I am bitter.

Fuck that, I am a little bitter. But then I think that someone, somewhere, read something a friend (who is not my wife) wrote in my defense, forcing this someone to bellow into the computer, "You are a blowhard, sir, and a coward!" And then the bitterness dissolves.

Also, there's this.

My readers (both of them) might recall that, on Wednesday, I wrote a journal entry recounting my experiences with Third Party Politics, publisher of The Book of Jesse. I had thought that to be the last word on the subject. I was wrong.

Thursday, my friend (who is not my wife), Donna, discovered this blog post at the Bleeding Cool Comic News website and wrote the following before alerting me to its presence. Clearly she was mad, even if some of her facts were a little off.

"There is no similarity whatsoever. The 'Book of Jesse' guys are trying to pull a publicity stunt for their mediocre web comic, and they're not doing a very good job. And if they were THAT concerned about making sure that small-potatoes comics creator's were getting their due, then they'd pay and credit the artist who did the original character and logo designs for 'Book of Jesse'. They know who he is."

And in a moment that I would not describe as my finest hour, I wrote the following:

"I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that Ronald Morgan and/or Thomas Foster (i.e. the co-writers of The Book of Jesse) are the ones who brought this to your attention. Also, I agree with Donna M that these glass-house-inhabitants have no business throwing stones."

Saturday, Thomas Foster, one of the creators of The Book of Jesse commented on Bleeding Cool:

"Probably should know that Jeremiah and his wife, Donna M (whom I've never met), apparently hold some old and misguided grudges. Sorry to hear that.

"Thomas Foster"

Then, he wrote the following messages to me.

"Does your wife know…

"That you did not design the Book of Jesse logo? That we've thrown out 100% of your 'original character sketches' and that you refused to work on a reasonable schedule? That not a panel of your' cross-hatchings' appear in a single issue?

"You are a blowhard, sir, and a coward. We have signed agreements and if you think you have a legal case, I say to you, please get a lawyer.

"Thomas Foster"

Then this:

"And furthermore...you were NOT the first BoJ artist. NOT NOT Not. liar, coward, blowhard."

To which I wrote the following:

"Hey there, Keith Olbermann. I would have mentioned something on the wall of the 'Hughes Brothers...' page if I thought you wouldn't delete it right away. I am more than happy to make this conversation public.

"I will respond to your longer message in its entirety, but first I invite you to read and comment on my facebook note from this past Wednesday, entitled "(Aside) Copyright? Or Copywrong?" I will post that comment, along with your messages here, and your comment at Bleeding Cool on my journal for my (maybe half-dozen) readers tomorrow morning. And because fair's fair, I will include any messages I send to you (including this one) and the comment at Bleeding Cool, which was not written in my finest hour. Also, Donna (who is not my wife) permitting, I will include her comment AND I will note that some of her facts are inaccurate, because they were.

"Then, if you like, I will post a link to both notes on the 'Hughes Brothers...' wall. I'd post the entries on Bleeding Cool as well, but I don't think anyone there actually cares what you, Donna, or myself thinks about this subject."

I later responded to his longer e-mail with the following:

"First off, let me say, as I mentioned in my note, that I hold absolutely no legal claim to The Book of Jesse - I have the paperwork to prove it. In fact, I do no less than give you 100 percent of the credit for to you and Ron, who have worked tirelessly on the projecting, investing years - years before we met, actually - and thousands of dollars and an immeasurable amount of blood and sweat into the creation and development of the Whitethorne clan, et al.

"Second off, the only reason I couldn't hit your schedule is because I had to make money elsewhere and even sleep. That left not a whole lot of time for the art, but I worked every second of every day that I could to produce for you. I know I didn't contribute as much as you did, but please don't belittle the work that I did do.

"Donna's remarks regarding the quality of your book were unnecessarily harsh, and I've told her as much. She was lashing out because she is a good friend who felt I was being slighted by your latest publicity push. I apologize on her behalf.

"Third, while the feeling is clearly not mutual, I have had the utmost respect for everything you and Ron have accomplished here. You have fought incredible odds to bring your vision to an audience, and I commend you for that. I don't particularly commend your attempt to capitalize on The Book of Eli--though I have no doubt that you and Ron actually believe that that the marketing department at Warner Brothers reads the Book of Jesse and has stolen your ideas.

"Finally, I assume that your description of me being a coward is based on the fact that I have never discussed any of my feelings with you and Ron. I'll be honest here - any hope I had of us having a civilized discussion about my (admittedly minor) contributions to the Whitethorne legacy were dashed when I found my art on the front page and elsewhere in the site along with a new first issue based on my layouts and not even so much as a thank you. You own the art. All of it. I have no say in that, nor do I want to (not because I think the book is bad, but because it was never my book).

"I have a lot of fantastic memories of drinking beers and bringing your ideas to life, and I will hold onto those, regardless of your name-calling, dismissals, bluster. I am truly sorry that it has come to this.

"Jeremiah"

Then there was this early Sunday morning:

"Jeremiah"
"Please understand that we are still, as we have always been, a small company, a small property, trying its best. I hope you understand when your friend posts what are obviously personal and angry missives (no matter the audience), it is (despite it's limited reach) mean-spirited. It feels no better when you portray our efforts as 'a publicity stunt'. I'm happy to discuss with you what it means to have your graphic material (intentionally or not, I have no illusions) cribbed for the sake of a major motion picture, but it seems as though you have a pre-proscribed concept on this.

"My take: You were a wonderfully enthusiastic part of the Book when we worked together. Your efforts moved us forward.

"We, and I , understand ( my lord, absolutley), that living a creative life is almost never a lucrative one. I appreciate your understanding of how much Ron and I have put into this book. I would relish a beer with you to tell of how far its come through our "nothing but Desire" that keeps us in the fold, but I respect that that may never be possible.

"J- I, we, wish you the best, please understand this. I regret that you may always have negative connotations of our time, but...

"You'll find by Tueday that the home page will be changed. And that Pierre and Bill with be totally refomatted. I am sorry if it has pained you to see your work continued without profit (of which there has been none). But I am further regretful that you chose this avenue for recourse. We have never meant you any harm.

"Thomas"

This is my reply

"You still don't get why I'm not happy or why Donna would react that way, and I didn't think you would. It's one thing to replace the issues I had done - we both knew that my style wasn't yours and that you would have preferred to change it. It's another thing entirely to do it without saying anything, then pretend I didn't exist. It's one thing to protect your work intellectually and legally, but it's another to step on someone who believed in you, trusted you, and worked hard for you.

"The solution to how I feel would not be changing the web page. It would be acknowledging my efforts publicly. But I burned that bridge when I jumped on a forum in a moment of rage and snarked about the allegations regarding Warner Brothers. You burned that bridge by blowing me off.

"This was never about money, and I certainly never expected to see any, even before I signed away the rights to my work. The fact that you keep returning to that is insulting, but not unexpected. So I'll say one more time that legally and intellectually you have the right to do whatever you want to every little piece of art I handed over, even chuck it in the trash, which you already have.

"For a small, independent publisher that likes to harp about the rights of the individual creator, you have no idea how to treat the people who help you along the way. That is what set both Donna and myself off.

"So yeah. Donna's opinion is her own. As for mine, I've removed my posts from Bleeding Cool, because I probably shouldn't have put them up in the first place, and I apologize to you and Ron that I did.

"And this is my last word to you on the subject. Again, feel free to comment on anything I have posted in my notes about Third Party Politics or The Book of Jesse and I will share your comments with my friends and let them form their own opinions about our history."

And that's where it stands as of this morning. That will probably be the end of it, although nothing has been, nor probably ever will be, resolved.

A (fake) movie poster from the (fake) cultural phenomenon, Three Stories in One, featuring Amber, who is perky and ... well, she's perky.

A (fake) movie poster from the (fake) cultural phenomenon, Three Stories in One, featuring Jeremiah, who would rather be elsewhere.

We now interrupt Three Stories in One Week to bring you a dilemma.

On January 1, 2004, an artist-wanted poster I'd answered in September returned to me, and within a couple of days, I met Thomas Foster and Ron Morgan, co-writers of a comic they were itching to produce. We had a few beers, and a few laughs and looked at my portfolio. I wasn't exactly what they were looking for, and their book wasn't exactly my cup of tea. We did, however, agree to give each other a shot, mostly because they were desperate, and I needed some practice.

We shook hands and set immediately to work. Together we developed a webpage using my drawings and the logo that a close friend of mine designed (for a small fee). The best part is that they knew exactly what they wanted, which, for the most part, is exactly what an artist-for-hire needs. For the next seven and a half months I worked hard, reading scripts, laying out, penciling, and inking pages, and overall, having a good time doing it. They liked my sense of humor, and even declared one of my panels to be one of the most delightfully morbid things they'd ever seen. But there were several sticking points that meant our partnership wouldn't be a good one over time.

One was that I couldn't produce an issue a month as they wished I would do. I tried my damnedest, but I was working two jobs, and these guys weren't paying me. Try as I might, they wouldn't understand that three pages a week plus sixty hours of actual job/commuting is, frankly, impressive. All they could see is that their book wasn't getting done on their schedule.

And that leads to the second, most important point: I looked at The Book of Jesse as a hobby – an intensive, grueling, and ultimately satisfying hobby, but still a hobby. Ron and Thomas ate, slept, and bled The Book of Jesse. This wasn't a hobby, it was their life. And as such, they held onto it protectively. I was allowed no input (with the exception of the art and character designs I put together) or even say in the project. Ron and Thomas were the partners, and I was the pen for hire. Which would be fine, if I was actually hired. I had signed away the rights for my work and ideas in exchange for a percentage I never expected to see.

In August of that year, I moved out of the New York region, and I sold my percentage for a modest (and we're talking burkha-level modesty here). A year later, I wanted to show someone what I had done online, and discovered, to my amazement, that the two issues I had drawn were completely redone (well, not completely. The new artist used all of my layouts - ask any comic book artist how hard laying out a page is and you'll understand my irritation). The art I had done for the web page, including, but not limited to, drawings of the White House and some bio art of Ron and Thomas. Even the logo my friend designed is everywhere, including the Cafe Press merchandize they're selling. You know what's not anywhere on the web page? My name.

Let me make one point before I go on: these two have done nothing wrong. They owned the rights to everything, and as "art-for-hire," I was more than happy to give them up. It's their dream, and they have put years and money and their most creative of thoughts into this project, and I wish them all the success that their hard work can bring them. They have no obligation to thank me for designing the visual style they use to this day, nor for designing the characters, nor for spending months and capital I did not have to bring them what they asked for. But still ... ouch.

That brings us to this morning, when I received this e-mail from their listserv:

Hi friends!

So, most of you know that for the past six years Thomas Foster and I have dedicated a great deal of our free time and most of savings to building up The Book of Jesse. We've had a lot of fun, met with some good critical success, and created something (along with the great art work of Takis Simon) that we are very proud of.

This Friday, a movie called The Book of Eli opens in theaters nationwide. It's a post-apocalyptic, Bible beating fantasy with an A-List cast. On first look, it's a coincidence. On closer look, the movie's central marketing campaign, its 'Deliver Us' poster with Denzel in full Matrix garb, is stolen directly from the cover of Volume One of The Book of Jesse: Deliver U.S. which was originally published in 2005. The writer of the movie is primarily a comic book writer and the comic has gotten a good deal of attention in comic book circles and at conventions.

We've started a facebook group and we're trying to draw attention to this outright theft. We're under no illusion that all art and entertainment (especially the good stuff) borrows liberally from other sources. But, this is beyond the pale and it's exactly the kind of thing a big Hollywood production company (Alcon/Warner Bros.) continually does to smaller artists.

So, we're making a stand on this one. Please sign up and voice your disapproval! Share this with your friends!

Let's not these guys get away with this one!

Ron

Pretty disturbing, right? Regardless of how I feel about my relationship with these two guys, getting your ideas stolen really sucks a lot. I have a history here, and so I looked into it.

See, I had read the scripts for the first seven issues of the Book of Jesse and I didn't think it wasn't the post-apocalyptic whatever they seem to be describing; it was ham-fisted political satire. Still, there was a huge, epic story that I wasn't privy to, so it might be true. But…the cover to their first volume doesn't look a thing like the Book of Eli poster they are harping on. Upon closer inspection, it is clear that the only complaint they have is the use of the phrase "DELIVER US," which vaguely resembles the Jesse tagline of "DELIVER U.S." There could be a lot more going on here. I don't know. I haven't read the book past the first volume.

So. Honest crusade for justice or shameless publicity stunt? Injured artists or opportunistic assholes? You decide. I know I've already made up my mind.

A (fake) movie poster from the (fake) cultural phenomenon, Three Stories in One, featuring Boone, a tall skinny guy with weird black hair and glasses.

A (fake) movie poster from the (fake) cultural phenomenon, Three Stories in One, featuring Wendy, The Worst Driver in the World©.

A (fake) movie poster from the (fake) cultural phenomenon, Three Stories in One, featuring Luke, the notorious, hygienic, sharply dressed slimeball.

I first started drawing in 1998 out of boredom and with the realization that, if I ever wanted to make a comic book or comic strip, I would have to do it myself. I spent the next couple of years doodling like mad, with energy and optimism I wish I still had. I had been really worried about inking the drawings because I had no idea what I was doing. When I did start inking (around 2002), I swore I’d never use color because I didn’t know what I was doing. Now I use color all the time, thanks photo-editing software and an amazing set of markers.

The markers aren’t all that portable, though, so when I received a cool set of multi-colored brush pens for my birthday this year, I immediately set out learning how to use them, the results of which are below:

First I whipped up some characters I draw all the time (Clockwise from the left: Sean McCoy, Shannon Heidebrecht, Carissa Weinstein, Eugene, and Lisa Green).

I followed with some ideas I’ve had bouncing around my head for a year for a comic strip I would like to do one day if I could get my shit together. These are a few characters who have appeared in other things I’ve written, including (clockwise from left), Lisa Green, age twenty-seven, at work; Sean McCoy, age twenty-eight, at play; Sean McCoy, age twenty-eight, at work; and Max Fuentes, age twenty-seven, who would be the center of the strip as well as this page.

I’ve also been brainstorming another main character for the imaginary strip, and here’s the page where I really made some breakthroughs with her, including ideas for her surname, hobbies, and age, as well as some ideas of what she’d wear at work and at play (also, some boots, because I think women’s boots are really cool and sexy), along with a few fun facial expressions.

And finally, some generic people I saw on the street here and there (mostly I need to practice drawing smaller figures that could go in the background in my imaginary comic strip)

Then, because I was having so much fun, I threw in some fanart of Captain America; the Green Lantern I would draw if I was asked to design an animated series for him; and Tyler Durden.

The question remains, though: can he go back to black and white? And the answer is yes. Yes, he can.