Unsolicited Submissions and Inappropriate Suggestions

 Please Don't Pester the Cartoonist (unless you’ve got the cash up front)!

As an artist since the age of five and later as a published cartoonist, I’ve always gotten suggestions from fans and friends. Many are thoughtful and well-meaning, and every once in a while, some comment or remark will spark a useful idea somewhere down the road. But rarely are they directly inspirational.

Let me say from the outset, these are to be distinguished from pointing out typos and costume mistakes and the like, which lately I’ve come to depend upon from my readers! I’m always grateful when people point out problems when I post artwork on Facebook before it goes to press—keep those coming. What I’m talking about are more global suggestions for projects, or suggestions for directions particular ongoing or future projects should take. Spoiler alert: I write, too, so I have a bunch of ideas of my own I’m pursuing, thank you very much.

Often, when people find out that I’m an artist (but are completely unfamiliar with my work or career), this sparks unsolicited suggestions of the “I have a friend” variety. “I have a friend who has an idea for a children’s book” is a common one; also, “I have a friend who has ideas for New Yorker cartoons.” Well, I hope their friend can draw!

Needless to say, comic book fans often have ideas for comic book series. Especially when I was self-publishing Bizarre Heroes back in the 90s, I seemed to get several submissions, all from different sources I’m sure, yet eerily parallel if not identical in terms of structure. All these would-be comic book writers—in spiral bound notebooks, I imagine—had worked out a multi-generational, intergalactic, cosmic saga that would run to 600 issues (issues!), while the main protagonist wouldn’t even be born until the first page of issue #73. I kid you not. (Some of these came to me by mail, some were pitched to me in-person at comic book conventions, but I’m sure they came from different people. They all must have been hit with the same stick!)

I would tell each, “Cut to issue #73, page one (and learn to draw!).”

Invariably, all such projects and proposals came with the offer to split the money fifty-fifty with the illustrator—something they see as a magnanimous enticement. I had to gently explain to these well-meaning souls that I had my own ideas I planned to pursue (or continue)—and since I would be the writer, I would be able to keep all the money!

What I tell people with the bug to write—whether children’s books, gag cartoons, or graphic novels—is that they need to either work for a big publisher who will hook them up with an illustrator, or mortgage the house to subsidize the production of professional-grade art—because most illustrators of any consequence need to pay the rent and eat. This goes for children’s books, gag cartoons, or graphic novels.

Better still, if their material is any good, they should just write prose. “Indy” projects by writer-artist “teams” face far greater obstacles—almost all concerning finances and sustainability—than indy projects by cartoonists (a single writer-artist), simply because only one, driven crazy person with hopes and dreams has to suffer the hardship, not two (to say nothing of relationship partners). When you multiply the collaborators, you only multiply the financial hardship, increasing the chances that your second issue will never come out.

My intention here is not to be unkind; as I say, most of these unsolicited “opportunities” have been thoughtful and well-intentioned, and certainly not malicious. Although I have had a few more pushy interactions—like the writer of Argosy Anachronisms (not exactly the title) who felt entitled to my advice because, after all, we were “brother” self-publishers (this was back in the 90s, obviously). At least this enterprising fellow had photocopies of reasonably accomplished finished art by some unknown he’d contracted—perhaps he had mortgaged the house.

However, I wasn’t able to tell him what he wanted to hear—I thought the story and art were rather undistinguished and mediocre, and the basic material rather unexceptional Marvel-DC stock superheroics of which the market was already saturated and didn’t need any more than it already had. Also, I thought the title was dumb and conjured comparisons with an old TV farm sitcom. Undaunted, this entrepreneur immediately went further down artist’s alley at whatever show we were at and proceeded to badmouth me to peers, all of whom reported it all back to me. Ah, good times!

There was also the slick hustler at the Pittsburgh art school in the late 90s that had a bunch of nice, fashion-conscious character designs but no storytelling pages (which is kind of what you needed in comics in those days) who plied me with drinks at a local pub and picked my brains on distributors, printers, etc., for a tedious hour that seemed to last forever—and then was never heard from again. But I digress.

The real topic I’m getting at is when fans make enthusiastic suggestions for storylines in my creator-owned ongoing projects. These can be termed “It would be cool if you …” suggestions. For example: “It would be cool if you teamed up Megaton Man with Stardust,” or, “It would be cool if you gave Yarn Man a flying saucer to scoot around in,” or whatever.

Again, such suggestions are generally well-meaning (and free of charge), and it’s nice to know that my work has captured a fan’s imagination. The problem, in such cases, is that the idea actually has to capture my imagination. Since I already have an imagination chock full of ideas that do capture my imagination, such unsolicited suggestions will usually strike me as trite, silly, or just plain inappropriate. (In fact the Yarn Man-saucer idea, which I just made up, has some possibilities …)

And unfortunately no amount of elaboration will help to sell it, no matter how persistent.

There’s one recent interaction I have in mind that is rather on the extreme side. For most of 2022, I’ve been at work on my satirical “1963 Annual”—now entitled X-Amount of Comics, which, it turns out, is really nothing but a long-winded Megaton Man comic in disguise (in other words, the kind of stock spoofing and parody I’m known for).

There is one quite intelligent fan and critic of my acquaintance that I’ve been corresponding with via email (he’s not on Facebook), and I sent him jpegs of a few recent pages that I’d been working on. “This is kind of my epilogue to In Pictopia,” I told him (X-Amount features cameos and allusions to a number of projects I’ve been involved with other the years, some more or less obvious, including Victory Folks, Wasteland, Big Bang, and Bizarre Heroes).

He replied that this was great, but now I needed to do a full-out sequel to In Pictopia.

I replied that this was kind of what I’d done, just with these few pages, and that it kind of took care of any and all In Pictopia ideas I had in mind for the moment, and that I was moving on to other material.

He shot back, no, really, I needed to do a full-blown sequel to In Pictopia, and that this would really burn the ass of the original author (the original story was only a mere thirteen pages; I suppose my interlocutro wanted a three-hundred-page follow-up). I patiently explained that I’d used the character designs from the story (I devised my own new names for them), as well as the word “Pictopia” (which I in fact had coined)—these being what I considered to be my substantial contributions to the collaboration—and that these new personas would stick around the Megaton Man universe for possible further adventures somewhere down the road (as if I needed more characters to work with). But for all intents and purposes, I had said what I wanted to say about In Pictopia at this point within the context of X-Amount, and was moving on.

My interlocutor shot back that that was fine, but now I really needed to bore in and really do a proper sequel to In Pictopia. He listed a number of events that had transpired in comics and pop culture since the story originally appeared in 1987—the New 52, various TV and movie adaptations, various minor controversies within comics publishing—that sorely needed to be addressed, and that only I could rectify—all while assuring me again that this would “burn the ass” of the author.

I took this as a compliment, of course, but I pointed out the original story was an allegory about a city of comic strips, comic books, and animation, that used the metaphor of urban renewal and replacement to allude to the creeping corporatizations of our imaginations—and that it had never referenced actual issues such as the Comics Code, work-for-hire, comics ratings, licensing and exploitation, or anything at all. It was abstract allegory, for Chrissakes.

Further, I patiently tried to explain, the author of In Pictopia wasn’t likely to be paying attention to my X-Amount of Comics to begin with, since he claimed to have ascended into literary heaven, and if perchance he was paying attention, or someone reported my doings to him, what I’d already done should do the job of pissing him off. In any case, what I had drawn was all I had in mind concerning that general topic. The issues my interlocutor had suggested were of no interest to me—I hadn’t read or watched the materials in question and wasn’t about to engage in research—and I reminded him that if he wanted to satirize them, he was free to do so himself, or write his own fanfic. I had no interest.

This went on for a total of half-a-dozen emails, my interlocutor suggesting what else I should do with my satire, and me patiently explaining either that I had just done exactly that (to my own satisfaction), and in any case that that was all he was going to get. It really got persistent to the point of rudeness (I have a suspicion that my interlocutor tips a few back when he gets on social media.) Finally, discussion was tabled and the subject was changed.

Again, I relate this story as an example of one over-enthusiastic fan making suggestions that just seemed to me inappropriate. I imagine TV producers, authors, actors, musicians, comedians and other creative types get even more unsolicited suggestions all the time. After all, such suggestions are always benign and at worst only amusing in their absurdity or irrelevance. There is always the possibility that a cartoonist can be convinced that your suggestion is great and entirely appropriate and that they should drop everything immediately and jump right on it—but keep in mind the odds are very small.

This recent exchange reminded me of a communication I once had with the original publisher of Megaton Man (suggestions from editors and publishers, who by implication might actually be paying you to execute them, have an altogether different force than those submitted by fans). This was after the initial ten-issue run of Megaton Man, and we were discussing the possibility of extending the series through a series of one-shots (his idea, not mine).

At the time, he suggested such targets as the Punisher movie (remember that?) and a variety of best-selling comic book characters. I have blogged about the entire episode at length here (in three parts), so I won’t repeat myself here. Suffice it to say, as in the case of X-Amount, my feeling was: Hadn’t I already just satirized the superhero genre adequately to everyone’s satisfaction?

In retrospect, I think the fundamental problem I had with my first publisher was that he regarded Megaton Man as a parody series akin to Li’l Abner or Li’l Annie Fanny or —in itself, a high compliment indeed—in which the continuing characters were nothing more than a framework upon which to hang the latest pop-culture reference. After all, Harvey Kurtzman and Al Capp were brilliant satirists; they used their respective strips to target Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, rock ‘n’ roll, Frank Sinatra, James Bond, politics, hippies, and so on. Their continuing casts of characters, however—Abner, Daisy Mae, Mammy, and Pappy in the case of Capp and Fanny and her agent, Solly Brass, in the case of Kurtzman—remained relatively flat and unchanging.

Perhaps I should have called my strip Li’l Megaton Man, but I pretentiously saw my series going forward as developing its main characters—Trent, Stella, Pammy, Percy, Rex, and Clariassa—into more three-dimensional people, not (simply) targeting more pop-culture or comics fodder. (This character development, I flatter myself to I think, is something I have accomplished to some extent, albeit belatedly, with the prose Ms. Megaton Man Maxi-Series—see what you think.)

In retrospect, I’ve come to understand that his was a fundamental misunderstanding about what I was about in Megaton Man, and for that matter, am still up to with X-Amount.

In my case (unlike Kurtzman or Capp), I don’t have an inexhaustible garbage can of pop-culture references or old comics to work from. In the early Megaton Man, I spoofed the Silver Age comics I grew up reading; in X-Amount, I work out some of my aggressions that have built up over the years. But after these drive-by send-ups, I’m not particularly eager to go hunting for more current targets (unless I happen to be commissioned to do so, as in the case of Splitting Image). I’m eager to get back to the characters, who seem to quickly evolve of their own volition from mere spoofs into more-or-less three-dimensional people—at least in my mind. The spoofing then seems to fall by the wayside, more or less.

This is perhaps a convoluted process that may not be apparent to friends, fans, editors, or publishers, and requires further unpacking. I’ll have more to say about this at another time.

Below: images from X-Amount of Comics, a work in progress, forthcoming in 2023. All characters, character names, likenesses, words and pictures are ™ and © Don Simpson 2023, all rights reserved.