You Want a Piece of Me? The Art of the Transactional

“You want a piece of me?”

Perhaps the most hilarious moment in Seinfeld is when Frank Costanza, played by the great Jerry Stiller, asks Elaine, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, “You want a piece of me?” Even funnier is the blooper reel of outtakes as Jerry repeatedly delivers the line to Julia, who can’t keep from cracking up.

In Glengarry Glen Ross, Alec Baldwin, playing a real estate developer clearly patterned after a young, ruthless Donald Trump (Baldwin has made a minor career of playing Trump all along), tells a roomful of besieged salesmen, “Fuck you, that’s my name. … And your name is you’re wanting.”

To be found wanting is to be found lacking in something, to be short of something necessary, to be needy, needful. To want for something is a tacit admission that you don’t measure up.

The decade or so since I earned my PhD, as I’ve gravitated back into cartooning and creativity (I’m loath to say “return to comics”), has been characterized by people wanting something from each other. In 2014, Steve Bissette wanted me to participate in his (still unpublished) Naut Comics anthology; I, in turn, wanted to participate in it. (I contributed a pretty darn good N-Man story, I flatter myself to think.) We both wanted, on some level, to redeem our participation in 1963, a fraught comics experience from the 1990s, to be sure.

Sometimes, needs are at least reciprocal and simpatico.

Since then, people have wanted me to do a pin-up or a short comics story for their indy project or crowdfunder. Most recently, Joe Ely Carrales III wanted me to draw three covers for his “Secrets of the Druid” story arc in The Improbable Girl and the Wonder Kitty #7 through #9 (again, they turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself).

Often, all we want is a name—your name will look good on my project, my name will lend prestige to your project. The work itself, the love you put into it, is secondary.

Coloring by Hilary Jenkins

I wanted Bill Morrison (Bongo Comics), Chris Ecker (Big Bang Comics), Jim Pascoe (Cottons), and Jeff Smith (Bone) all to contribute text pieces for The Complete Megaton Man Universe volumes I and II. To be sure, I wanted their perspective on the 1980s and 1990s, since they were witnesses to history (I got what I wanted; thanks, guys!). But I also wanted their names; their names will make my work look bigger.

 “And your name is you’re wanting.”

I want blurbs to sell my book. You want an impressive guest list for your show. They want a variant cover for their crowdfunder. Your YouTube channel can benefit my YouTube channel. Transactional politics: You scratch my back, I’ll scratch your back. Quid pro quo.

Fans want an autograph, a sketch, a piece of art; innocuous enough. But sometimes, they want more. Newcomers, longtime shutouts, desperately want to break into comics before it all fades away. (This behavior only grows more frantic by the year; I’ve seen it.)

“You want a piece of me?”

I’m as guilty of it as the next needful, needy sonuvabitch.

Alan Moore, presumably, is sick and tired of people wanting something from him, especially his name. He’s become obsessed with removing his name from all his comics creations. Presumably, Hollywood wants his work, his ideas, but not in the right way; Alan doesn’t feel wanted the way he wants to be wanted.

Even when I argued that Fantagraphics’ recent edition of In Pictopia was to be a celebration of many people’s favorite Alan Moore story, Alan wasn’t moved. He still wanted his name removed.

It was a self-serving argument, to be sure. His name would have made my career look bigger; the absence of his name (In Pictopia “by Don Simpson” and company) makes me look like a fool.

So many people wanted so many things from Ed Piskor. I wanted to be interviewed on Cartoonists Kayfabe—I wondered when those guys would ever get around to me. When it finally happened last year, it was bigger than even a positive Comics Journal review, almost bigger than the publication of X-Amount of Comics. The week it took for the video to drop after the shoot was excruciating.

I wanted that interview. I needed that interview.

“And your name is you’re wanting.”

Ed, apparently, wanted things from people in return. Maybe he convinced himself the things he wanted were trivial or modest or within reason, even when they were manifestly inappropriate. Because, after all, he had given so much.

We all are capable of convincing ourselves of that rationalization.

“You chipped little bits of my self esteem away ... until I was vaporized.”

We want the wrong things from each other—I’ve seen that particularly to be the case in comics these past ten years. We want the wrong things, even as the comics medium and artform dwindles away to nothing. It’s as if everyone wants to relive the worst aspects of the heyday of the 1990s—the egos, the greed, the gimmicks—but not the art, the love. We want power, we want status, we want the next rung up the ladder of our career agenda, whatever.

“You want a piece of me?”

It’s a game of diminishing returns, musical chairs on the deck of the Titanic. Meanwhile, what really matters is sinking beneath our feet.

Ed really loved comics. People wanted so much from Ed. But was it the thing most needful?

Nobody got what they wanted from this situation, presumably.