Career Conflation Comics Style! The Cully Hamner Story
on March 8th, 2013So, many years ago, I hired some poor fan on the skids to help me out around the house and office, and what did I get for my pains? Nearly two decades later, he’s claiming he was never paid, which is a big fat lying liars who lie Lie, and that he was SEEEEKRITLY my inker. And for awhile he was also claiming he was SEEEEKRITLY my boyfriend. Ugh. Schmuck. I whined blogged about it here.
I used to feel really bad when some whack job would run around and pull this sort of number on me, until the day I got over my embarrassment about being a nut magnet and realized EVERYBODY in the creative profession is a nut magnet. Career Conflation and Importance via Proximity is a universally crappy experience we are all forced to endure.
Now that we have social media, we can share these creeptastic stories with our peeps on our private pages. I feel so much better when I know I’m not the only eye in the center of the Stupidstorm.
Name dropping for fun and profit is the primary currency in fandom and if you can’t get cozy with a good story, get cozy with a bad one! Power via proximity makes the fandom go round. Why…it’s just like Hollywood, only without the Louis Vuitton and extraordinarily high maintenance personal hygiene.
LEVEL BLACK: The Delusional Jerk
These people are either lying or exaggerating level green or yellow stories to make them much more interesting than they actually are. They consider themselves in a higher caste than the people they hang out with, and they will drop names like its no tomorrow in order to illustrate just how much better they are from you. However, the secret is out: these folks are full of shit.
Several of my pro peeps shared their tales of woe with me, of jerkasaurus assistants, and other minor functionaries, whose conflations caused drama where’er they did tred.
Thanks to the delightful Cully Hamner, I now share with you this tale of the Art Assistant From Hell, He Who Thinks Spotting Blacks makes him…An INKER.
It’s amazing to have to explain to an assistant that filling in blacks *isn’t* actually inking. I have a similar story with a guy who was interning at Gaijin, filling in the backs and such. He was telling people on some message board that he was my inker on BLUE BEETLE. So I sat him down, poured the pressure on him. He kept trying to tell me that since he was filling in my blacks– putting ink on a page, in other words– that he was actually the inker. He would not hear any logic otherwise.
At a con sometime later, after he was no longer our assistant, he told me he was working for “DC Animation.” When I questioned further, he admitted that he had simply done some unpaid designs for a group of people trying to PITCH a show to WB Animation using DC characters. When I told him this didn’t mean he was “working for DC,” he said that he WAS– he simply hadn’t been hired yet.
Still later, I caught him on another board telling people he was writing the next Superman movie “for DC Comics.” So, I called him out again: DC Comics doesn’t produce the movies, I said. It’s for a different part of DC, he said. Who are you working for, I asked. He gave me a bogus name. When I told him how many DC people I had contact with, and that no one seemed to know the name he gave up, he freaked out, and said he didn’t owe anyone an explanation. Weird thing is that the other posters on this board defended him…!
It was just stunning that this little asshole thought he could bullshit someone who *actually* does many of the things he *claims* to do…
Alas, Cully, I’m sorry you had to endure that. It is almost exactly like what I went through with Doctor Lizardo, and we know many pro peeps who share similar stories. Thanks for sharing yours.
And remember kids: spotting blacks is not inking. You have to earn those chops. You don’t get the pro bucks and the pro respect unless you have the pro skills. There is an order of magnitude between what you are doing as piece work, and actual creative work. The fact that you don’t know that is why you are where you are, and why Cully Hamner is where he is.
Lying will not endear you to your client.
Good luck with that career.
I once had a guy, back in ’09, claim he was an artist at image and could get me into the company. Thankfully I found out it was a scam before I paid the page rate he was asking for without showing any progress. He was also one who thought spotting inks made him not just an inker, but the finisher on the book.
I’m always sad to hear about people whose work I like getting arseholes trying to take credit and causing hell.
I’m genuinely shocked by people who don’t have any clue what these terms mean.
It’s also alien to me that people think filling a black spot like a paint by numbers kit with one color is in any way creative.
Have you ever noticed no one brags about being the guy who erases the pencil lines? I mean, I do all my lettering by hand, those Ames lettering guidelines can really stick to the paper. I often have someone else erase them. Yet, there’s no fighting for Eraser Guy Credit.
Or to use another industry example: peeling potatoes does not mean you`re a chef.
Oh dear, you’re really loving these GIFs lately, aren’t you?
I can also testify that spotting blacks is not inking, as I’ve occasionally (not for a great whilte though) spotted blacks for my husband, and unlike him I have absolutely no artistic talent whatsoever.
“Or to use another industry example: peeling potatoes does not mean you`re a chef.”
Or even a cook…!
Cutting out tone sheets is exactly like drawing backgrounds. EXACTLY.
Just like my buying someone a meal is EXACTLY like a lifetime romantic commitment.
Anyone who says different is a big old meanie!
Oh! Can I take Eraser Guy Credit? Despite never having actually met you, Colleen, nor having laid eyes on any of your original pages? I think I can still make the story work.
Well, maybe not. But we’re still totally best buds because we’ve had occasional online interaction, right? (;
I just put a dent into my desk, knocking wood. I’ve never had to deal with anyone as loony as in these anecdotes, and I so hope I never do. Man alive!
When I was just a meek self publisher, Doctor Lizardo was content to pack and ship books for a $20 bill for a few hours work.
When I went to Image Comics, Doctor Lizardo decided that made him an Image Comics creator, and he wanted everyone to know it.
When you aren’t getting many assignments or sales, their grievances evaporate. When you get a lot of attention, they come out of the woodwork.
The proof is a 17 year + absence in actually pursuing any kind of collection for this alleged non-payment. He knows perfectly well he got paid. He didn’t have any problem living with the reality of this when I wasn’t getting much press. Now that I am getting a lot of press, he just wants attention.
He really, REALLY thought he was going to ride my coat tails to the BIG TIME, baby.
He never got farther than being a footnote for fan gossip.
Boo hoo.
It gets worse the higher you go, and every time you hit a new level, you get another round of it.
Someday I will have to tell you about what happened when I started working with J Michael Straczynski. O.M.G.
That could be next week’s blog.
Also, wasn’t there a point where Stan Lee said he used to help Jack Kirby with the artwork on Captain America because Stan used to erase pencils for him? I might be mis-remembering that though.
I really don’t know. I know a lot of artists help each other out in a pinch. I’ve done it more times than I can count. During the self publishing days, many times we were all sitting up in Dave’s suite just doing our comics and passing the pages around.
@Erik Burnham -
The really depressing thing is that I don’t believe Doctor Lizardo even makes second runner-up on the all-time list of crazies Colleen has had to deal with.
Yeah, now that you mention it, I’d place him about 10th. All in all, I’d say there were about 10 really truly troublesome people in all my years in publishing, and that’s over 25 years. So ten people, not bad. But OMG, what damage 10 people can do.
OK, a friend just reminded me of the funniest part of all this.
In an effort to get Doctor Lizardo up off his butt and motivated, dopey me, in true cheerleader fashion, tried to get Lizardo going with a rousing dose of Tony Robbins seminars and tapes. Zid Zigler, you name it. I took him to those expensive rah rah things at a major stadium at my expense, got him his own set of YOU CAN DO IT motivational goodies.
I knew this was not going to happen when he complained “Why do you exercise so much? It’s not like you’re a model or anything!” and then after I spent all that money at HIS REQUEST at first claiming he just LOVED it all, within months he was grumbling about how stupid and boring it all was, and how only idiots fall for that stuff. He never even got through the tapes.
Lizardo had a bad habit of pretending to like what you liked in an attempt to ingratiate himself to you. But after awhile, the mask always slipped. I wish he’d let it slip before I wasted all that time trying to help the guy.
It really is surprising sometimes how much people puff up the significance of what they have done or who they have met. Me, I try to stay humble about any connections I have.
I can only imagine how annoying it is to have someone who helped pack boxes going around claiming to be an artistic partner.
It was annoying 20 years ago, now it’s just sick-making.
I wish aspiring creators would take note of this and realize why so many pros are hinky about having anything to do with them. Why we won’t look at portfolios, fanart or fanfic.
This is it. This is a major reason why breaking in is so damned hard. This happens ALL THE DAMNED TIME.
Pros are afraid to hire newbies.