A Distant Soil by Colleen Doran

A fan just informed me that a man claims he was “employed as an unpaid personal assistant who inked backgrounds,” for me in the 1990′s.

This is simply false.

This man was not an inker on ANY background work and spotting blacks is not inking. He not only did very little spotting of blacks on my work, but my mother did almost all of it until about the year 2005. He was hired primarily to pack and ship books, and was brought in at the last minute to help lay down tone sheets when my mother was unable to. That is not inking and that is not creative work of any kind.

Moreover, this man also was paid more than $800 cash for his work packing and shipping books, and for his brief hours cutting and pasting tone sheets. I also purchased convention display space for him so he could sell collectibles, and allowed him to store his collectibles and personal belongings in my office rental space for no fee, which I had to continue to rent long after the space was no longer useful to me for months until he deigned to remove his property.

I have had nothing to do with him since 1996, since his behavior toward me was completely inappropriate, culminating in his tearful marriage proposal while he was driving me to Fedex when my car was in the shop. For the record, I’d never even held his hand.

In addition to paying him $800 cash, I paid for his gas and meals whenever he worked with me, only to find out this to him meant “girlfriend”. He has no right to any acknowledgement in my work, any more than any other office assistant does, nor does any other non-creative assistant generally get. I’ve also worked, uncredited as a grunt, on more books than I can count.

If anyone is confused, spotting blacks for about 4 hours is not inking.

The only people who have ever done any actual background inking for me are Michael Soneson and Tracy J Summerall (EDIT) and Richard Doran, and that was in 1987.

This man never has nor ever will be credited for creative work because he did not do any. Period. He was paid in full and in cash for packing and shipping books, and for the short hours he pasted tone sheets, the pasting of which would not constitute even one full day’s effort.

Long after I cut off my association with him, he continued to tell people he was still working for me.

That anyone would promote themselves over my mother, who is the one person whose countless hours of labor and dedication really keep me afloat, is an outrage. And even she gets paid. It is a complete lie that I have ever taken advantage of any creator for any reason. This man was paid for what small amount of labor he actually did.

I know several other creators who have had the unpleasant experience of having people who spotted blacks declare themselves inkers, but my God, it is almost 20 years later, and someone (I assume it to be him) is spreading this stupid story over his broken heart dreams. Good God. Utterly pathetic. If anyone gets any further info about this stupid thing, contact me, and I’ll turn it over to my lawyer.

This guy was a lying weasel then, and if he’s still lying, he’s in for a treat from my attorney.

For further details, my Facebook account has a long thread. It’s pretty sad that I hired this homeless guy who needed extra cash, and he paid me back with slander.

I had several people work for me off and on as assistants, including a man named Ken Talton. Ken Talton calls this person Doctor Lizardo. More info HERE.

I know the person in question. He worked in her mail room. I know this because I worked briefly in the mail room. I know this because he was briefly a business partner of mine and I spent a decade paying off the bills he left me with. I know this because he tried to frame a friend of mine for Kiddie Pr0n. (Read the whole thing.)

As far as I know the only contribution he made to the comic book was applying zipatone (badly), packing boxes, running a table at conventions and a lot of unwelcome drama. He was fired primarily for passing himself off as a creative contributor. This was a highly dishonorable and quite deliberate act. His termination was over a decade ago.

I’m not going to name the fink unless he attempts something else, but as my friend found out to his dismay, this fellow has a nasty habit of holding grudges and acting on them in a potentially very destructive and always quite passive aggressive manner. He is exceedingly good at passing himself off as harmless and likeable. He is neither.

So let me state that if you’ve encountered the claim that an affable, seemingly innocent fan is an uncredited contributor to A Distant Soil it is not in any way true and the gentleman’s affability is an astoundingly convincing mask concealing a dark dark soul.

Doctor Lizardo was quite the subject on my old blog, because one of Lizardo’s nastier acts of revenge was trying to frame a local comic book shop owner for kiddy porn, for no other reason than that he once owed the shop owner money. The shop owner helped this dude out when he was homeless, and also got a good bit of backstabbery for his pains. I wish I was making that up. This is another blog post by Ken Talton from 2006. It’s a long post, you’ll need to scroll down.

Fortunately, a friend of his we’ll call “Biff” (real name BOB) took him in loaned him $4,000 bucks, put him up for a year….helped get him a job (which was like pulling hens teeth)….got his car fixed…you know…”did stuff”. Dr. Lizardo repaid him by ….ummm….well he didn’t….he mooched and went to sci-fi cons and bought >$4000 dollars worth of stuff. “Biff “got quite justifiably peeved, demanded his money back and threw him out.

Dr. Lizardo was a petty man and he had but one thing going for him…everyone (including me) knew he was a “nice guy”. The existence of Biff was a reminder that he was anything but...

Meanwhile, Biff took over a failing comic book store, just as the comics market was collapsing… however, by diversifying and going big into anime, RPG’s and video rental….he completely transcended the odds and made it quite successful. (Full disclosure: He hired me as a clerk.) He also became quite a hub of local anime fandom as fan-clubs would meet at his shop.

Given that much of Doctor Lizardos Fanboy mojo came from video piracy (for “free” of course) this infuriated him more than the eviction did. He made a big deal of not patronizing the store. At the time I considered both “Biff” and “DL” friends so I just wracked it up to some fan thing.

Doctor Lizardo got his friend to rent all the anime porn from Biff (Bob’s) shop.

Soooo…AFTER COPYING ALL OF THE ANIMATED PR0N FOR HIMSELF. He got the titles of the ones he thought could destroy Biff and called the vice squad. He tried to get me to back him up but when I realized that he was….well…EVIL I went straightaway and talked to Biff.

And the vice squad cop he just happened to call turned out to be my big brother. You know the one. Officer of the Year.

Anyway, were my brother not into geekery, this might have ended very very badly.

Doctor Lizardo lied to me, to my friends and behind my back. I confronted him about his lies at the time, as he’d become so careless, he’d lie right in front of me to other people about me. I have had nothing to do with him since, except the unavoidable act of telling him to clear out his stuff from my space.

Any fan who tells you they did creative work on my book, or that they worked unpaid in the mid 1990′s, is lying. It’s not misinterpretation. It’s not debate. It’s a lie.

I will not hesitate to deal with this through my attorney if this doesn’t stop right now.

I’ve had enough of you.

EDIT: And to REALLY drive the point home:

I’d like to see this fucker sit in court and duplicate my line. I can’t think of anyone whose line looks like mine. You think you’re an inker? Sit down and draw like me, you asshat. I DARE you.

And BTW, it is impossible for ANYONE to be my inker on A Distant Soil or anything I pencil and ink myself, because anyone who knows my process also knows I NEVER DO FULL PENCILS, and therefore, it is impossible to ink me. I THINK IN INK, which means I go directly from thumbnails to final inks. NO full pencils at ALL. There is NO WAY anyone could finalize inks from my thumbnails but me.

INK THAT, asshat!

EDIT: One small clarification. I spoke to Lizardo about 5 times in 1997, and saw him three more times in 1997. Mostly to tie up loose ends, such as to tell him to clear out his stuff from my office, and to repeatedly tell him there would be no more work. I don’t want to give exact dates on any of this, because it might become easy to identify him.

I bent over backwards trying to not hit this ant with an atom bomb, to let him move on and save face.

Yet he has shown time and again, he’s unable to do so.

More than two years after I cut him off completely, I tried to help Ken Talton run a convention in hopes of helping him dig out of the five figure financial hole Doctor Lizardo helped stick him with. Lizardo tracked every move we were making with the show, hoping to catch us without a proper license, or tax payment. He made many false claims about same, and about my business dealings based on nothing but envy and resentment.

I had no need for Lizardo or his “help” from the very beginning, and found myself trying to dig up work for him to do because he needed extra cash. All I got was drama, a constant fount of whining, and backstabbery. He was easily replaced, and I was so much better off with a decent maid service, and a professional organizer. And my mom.

Bye, Lizardo.

Lizardo, you are a petty, ugly man. Enjoy the lifetime of obscurity you richly deserve.

EDIT: One more update to this cluster EFF and let’s hope this is the last. According to my source, Lizardo’s spin on trying to frame Biff/Bob the Retailer is that he was genuinely upset about the evils of kiddy porn, and approached my brother the cop in concerned citizen fashion. After my brother investigated, they had a nice bonding moment as my bro assured Lizardo there was nothing to worry his petty little head about. It’s all just manga! Fear not, citizen!

This is bullshit. Lizardo has never met my brother. Ever. Lizardo filed an anonymous police report. The police report reflects that.

Lizardo bragged to me and to Ken that his reason for filing the police report was not genuine concern for the presence of kiddy porn, but out of revenge. He admitted this to me. He said “Bob is an asshole.” He bragged that the ignorant general public would see the manga and anime, mistake the pictures for pictures of children, and HA!HA! Bob would go to jail.

My brother did not contact Lizardo after. They did not have a bonding moment where my brother assured him the childen of Tidewater were safe from evil Bob, because, of course, Lizardo’s report was anonymous, and my brother has no idea who the hell Lizardo is. Lizardo’s contact with me and my family was, for the most part, so tenuous, that with the exception of my mother, he could not identify them in a lineup.

Lizardo filed a false police report against his former friend Bob hoping to destroy Bob and his business out of pure spite. He admitted it to me. He never spoke to my brother after, he never identified himself to the police in any way.

The only way he knew that my brother was the one who investigated the case was when he found out via Ken and me some time later.

Anime/Manga fandom has a SMOF in its midst who went out of his way to destroy a reputable book and video dealer.

I kicked that thing to the curb almost twenty years ago. If you want to hang with it, that’s on you, Fandom.