After a few months of emails I was offered a contract from Platinum Studios editor in chief Lee Nordling to write a four issue mini-series based on the first story in the anthology package, Weird Adventures in Unemployment.  

Weird Adventures In Unemployment was to be a horror spoof influenced by EC Comics, and 80's comedies like Weird Science and Better Off Dead revolving around a character more or less based on myeself named Wrigley Barnes and his supernatural misadventures in his New England hometown usually involving his quest for a job to pay the bills.  At the end of each story he saves his hometown from zombies or ghosts but eventually gets fired from the job and is on to the next job/adventure.  

Unfortunately in my naive inexperience in the contract I signed over the rights of my creation in a work for hire agreement.

I excitedly buzzed through the treatments and scripts for the four issues in a speedy six months because Weird Adventures was going to be one of the first comics published by Platinum and come out in comic shops across the country.


PART 2

After I finished work I had to wait for an artist to become available, and waited, and waited, for a whole year until a pencil went to paper. Two different artists hired were eventually fired when their work never began. I figured at the time they must have been lazy or something but looking back I realize work for hire contracts are bad news. 

Lee Nordling was taken off editorial duties of Weird Adventures and replaced by another guy, Andrew Foley for this specific project before he eventually left the the company all together. Andrew got the comic moving and found an artist named John Keene who quickly started producing work that looked great and a even gave me for the first time a projected release of Spring/early Summer 2007.

The first issue was almost finished and then for more unknown reasons Andrew was relieved of his editor duties by a new EIC. Work was going to be stopped on my comic for about another year or so I was told because this guy was thinking it needed rewrites.

That was when I was tipped off that Weird Adventures wasn't really stopped at all but they were searching for a new writer to do those rewrites without me and that they thought my stuff sucked. They weren't even giving me a chance.

They were kicking me off my own creation. Apparently in the contract I signed they can do that. How was there even a comic without me?

It hurt pretty bad. The first two editors were telling me I my work was good. I thought my scripts were good too. I started to doubt my abilities. Maybe I did stink.

At this time now about a year ago Platinum finally started putting out comics. I read the first one on their webcomics site DrunkDuck.com, their flagship Cowboys and Aliens. If you ever seen it, it's got to be one of the worst comics ever made. Despite having somewhat of a cool idea of cowboys fighting aliens, the art sucked, and the story was beyond lame.  

That sting of Platinum's denouncement of my writing skills went away when I realized they're the ones who don't know SHIT about comics.

A few more of thier books trickled out to the racks at my local comic shop like their KISS comic and that HERO BY NIGHT stuff by the winner of their Comic Book Challenge contest I would get to know later and I have to tell you, I'm sorry but nobody is skipping an issue of Spider-man for none of those turkeys! 

More crappy cheap looking art on top of lame manufactured concepts. The whole company is built on this ridiculous model of having a library of characters to exploit into other media. Although nobody has ever heard of any of them, including mine, or cares about them. No wonder they have never turned a profit.


Read a great article about Platinum here at Comic Book Resources here.

No doubt that line...

"When I read about newbie creators having a fit because they didn't read their contract signed away their rights to Platinum, this is why I shake my head. Acquiring I.P. is what Platinum does."

...is a shot at me at action I took which you can read later on in this blog. I'm cool with it though.


My Weird Adventures was character driven, not concept driven which is what they didn't like. The concept was unknowingly the same thing as A Night At The Museum to boot. Platinum Studios are not artists and that's the reason why Cowboys and Aliens is lame and will never make it to the silver screen like they keep hyping and will continue to be failures. They don't understand why things are successful. Things like Family Guy or South Park are not successful because of their concept. It's because there was an art and a unique voice personality behind the characters. A unique voice is what catches on wth the public. That's where we had are differences and I had to go. I wanted to do funny charcters, they want to squeeze out a lame concept.


PART 3

This is where I started acting unprofessional.

I decided I had nothing to lose having been fired without being told and wrote a strongly worded email to the head of Platinum Studios Scott Mitchell Rosenberg telling him what I thought of his company for dicking me around going on three years at that point and that is was shady that they kicked me off my creation and replacing me without even telling me. I was pretty rough but I felt the email deserved it.

I got the feeling he didn't know much about what I was talking about but he actually told me he would try to help me out and passed me off to Dan Forcey, VP of Development to finally finish this comic "in a way I'd be proud of" he said. I thought that was nice of him an wrote him back and thanked Mr. Rosenberg.

I emailed Forcey and he blew me off repeatledly until he passed me off to another guy named Adam Rosenblum, yet another EIC. I realized at that point Rosenberg was blowing me off to Forcey and him so on to Rosenblum who was also blowing me off all hoping I'd just go away.  

I finally got Rosenblum on the phone. There's been a lot of "finally's" in this blog hasn't there. Yeah I been through alot of persistant bullshit.

He finally was straight with me that they wanted another writer because he thought my scripts weren't professional enough and again I knew nothing about comics, but try to satisfy me (to go away) they would put what was completed by John Keene and I on Drunkduck.

I hestitantly agreed in fairness to the artist. He desreved to get his work shown to the world although I wished this thing would never see the light of day because I've grown to really hate the Platinum.

He apparantly called John Keene up to make some finishing touches. After a few weeks I wasn't updated on those finishing touches though and  justifiably fearing I was being screwed again, I myself contacted John Keene to see the finishes. It was pretty good but I thought a few bits of dialouge needed to be changed.

I wrote to Rosenblum and said I had to do a few slight rewrites confessing I peeked at the book. He hated the entire book so I figured it was no big deal but Forcey finally wrote me back (remember that guy) and told me I was fired (wasn't I already?) from the book for contacting the artist without an editor's approval.

I finally gave them a reason to remove me from (STEAL) my creation. Not like I wasn't pushed to take matters into my own hands an try and put out a comic that my GASP not suck!

I wrote a blog about this whole situation on Comixtalk.com back in June. It was a bit melodramtic but damning.  

read it here 

Well that blog got a whole bunch of attention. Namely from Platinum's number one shill DJ Coffman aka the contest winner and writer/artist of Hero By Night. We blogged against each other for two days and it got pretty dirty.

and the story got picked up in an article written by Heidi MacDonald on Publishers Weekly

read that here


PART 4

I came off as a naive rube for getting into this situation in Heidi's article but I confess I was. The system is flawed and I know I'm not the only one to have ever suffered this indignity so why shut up and take it?

Dan Forcey refused to comment on the situation, basically validating all that I had said by not saying anything. What could he say without lying? They WERE trying to kick me out the door and take my character away from me to crap it all up.

That must have pissed him off good. But he got his revenge on me. Months have passed and brought us up to today.  

A webcomic called WEIRD ADVENTURES IN UNEMPLOYMENT has hit Drunk Duck. If I was fired in June and it took me six months to write the original comics and John Keene about two months to draw, letter and color it this proves they already ditched me before officially firing me and said they were getting sombody else to do it now.  Although it was already being drawn as we spoke.

of course I blogged again...

read that here

I won't link that comic to this site like the blogs because honestly it sucks. I feel bad dissing the guy who rewrote MY characters and stories because he's just a dude trying to make some cash but from what I saw already it is greatly inferior to my original version.

MY version is a real COMIC BOOK with monsters that were scary and had an attitude, if you haven't noticed by now I have a lot of, not something weak that looks like a Dilbert cartoon. 

                                          THE REAL WRIGLEY BARNES!


An orginal concept sketch of Weird Adventures In Unemployment's main character and charicature of me Mike Strang, WRIGLEY BARNES. The art by John Keene which I don't own was very similar to this design.

This internet battle I've been waging most likely ruined any chance I had at a comic book career and I'm another casualty on the blvd of broken dreams. BUT there's something satisfying about artistcally sticking to your guns and giving the finger to your former employers which I've done here.  

Hell, CBR picked up the recent blogs and this time called me by name.

Click here, the blurb is in the middle of the page. Apparantly they hate Platinum too.

This is my website, I can say what I want!

MIKE f'n STRANG!


UPDATE!  SEPTEMBER 2008

As of September 2008 Brandon J Carr's horrid version of Weird Adventures In Unemployment has ceased operation for some months now. Apparantly Platinum Studios weren't paying they're (ahem) "creators" including him and he quit. Not only did they not pay him they quit paying my blog war buddy and Platinum's main cheerleader DJ Coffman. You can read about that fiasco here...  http://www.djcoffman.com/tikibar/2008/09/03/its-official-platinum-studios-is-now-ridiculous/

Platinum Studios as a company went public into the stock market with shares valued at 23 cents. With that inflow of cash they managed to squander it all and are currently over 9 million dollars in debt. You can read about that here...

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6578634.html?nid=2789

I imagine they'll be out of business pretty soon. So long A-Holes!
SUMMER READS 2007 

Almost every week I buy a stack of about a dozen back issues off the internet. I’ll be one to say that the big comic book bust of the early 90’s when values took a dump was great for a reader like me. As a rule I never pay more than two bucks each for a comic (unless they’re new and I have to shell out 2.99) and thanks to the market’s big bust I never do, usually getting good stuff. I try to mix up what I get to keep stuff eclectic, though that never seems to stray much from Marvel or DC.

My collection of about 650-700 books is a mix my much older brother’s comics he gave me (late 70’s - early 80’s), my initial collection from elementary school through early high school (late 80’s - early 90’s), and sporadic issues from then until the beginning of the 21^st century where I started getting hardcore into funny books again when I was unemployed for an entire year.

When I was inspired to get back into reading comics again after I was deficiently employed I reread my old issues. A lot of the comics seemed like brand new stories to me because I haven’t looked at some of them in nearly 15 years and forgot what happened in others and some I never read at all.

Since I returned to filling my long boxes I’m employed again and I would like to share some of the stuff I’ve been buying and reading from the wonderful world of back issues…

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #363 - 370’s (MARVEL 1992)

Spider-man is my buggy bro. I had (still have) all his toys and watched all his cartoons growing up. Never collected many of his comics though. One comic I did have was the last issue from the first arc Carnage showed up (#363). That one issue kicked ass old school style. Carnage was carnaging up NYC and Spidey had to team-up with Venom to take him down. They catch him at a heavy metal concert and Mister Fantastic and The Human Torch show up and help Spidey defeat Carnage then trick Venom into being captured. It got me fired up to get a few more issues. Next thing you know his parents who were thought dead, show up out of nowhere. Are they real? Are they clones? What are they what? I don’t know but it’s got me hooked to find out. It’s old news what happened but since I never read it, IT’S NEW TO ME SO BACK OFF! It’s got to be bad because I have sporadic issues up till the present and there is no mention of them.

After this arc ties up I know the Clone Saga is supposed to happen next. Reviews say it sucked but that isn’t what will keep me from buying it. The fact that it’s a two year story running over a zillion issues does. There are so many other comics to explore.

THE IRON MAN MANUAL (MARVEL 1993)

This is an interesting book full of schematics of Iron Man’s various armors. It shows the inner workings of the suit with diagrams of how the transmitters, processors, and energy systems work, told in notes by Iron Man himself, Tony Stark. I also have another issue like this all about The Punisher’s armory. The amount of made up technology in this book amazes me in two ways:

1. The detail of the descriptions.

and…

2 . Who the hell comes up with this crap?

It must have taken forever to come up with all this fake stuff. I always wondered how sci-fi writers (as being a writer myself) make up intricate technology like this, Star Trek, Star Wars, and The Matrix. They must have a PHD in B.S.

AQUAMAN #57, 61-63 (DC COMICS 1978)

His hand me down collection isn’t that big (about 150 comics) but my brother must have been a big Aquaman fan. Sifting through his collection he has about 20 issues of the man who talks to fish, second only to his nearly 40 Superman comics. I personally like that power while others think it’s stupid. Probably because sometimes I get lonely and think talking to a porpoise would be cool. Think of some of the people you know, wouldn’t a large crustacean or a tuna be more interesting to gab with?

Anyway, this set of stories picks up after his mid 70’s run in Adventure Comics, which I also have but haven‘t read yet. The issues were only 17 pages long back then but there is more going on in them than most comics coming out on the shelves this Wednesday. Each separate story is based around the arc of him swimming home to tell his wife that their son is dead, killed by Black Manta. That happened in the Adventure Comics run, in the only issue of that I’m missing, damn it! He makes it home, not before a quick team up with Batman to fight that Kobra guy, and his wife freaks out on him blaming poor Aquaman. Aquababy dying must have been a hell of an issue. She forgives him after a battle with his brother Ocean Master and then the series is cancelled.

I love Aquaman. In one scene his telepathy didn’t work because the fish were turned out to be robots. Awesome. How much more “comic book” can you get? As you can tell I’m not one of those guys who pick up books that are “Suggested for Mature Readers”.

His current series is kind of lame with some other younger Aquaman keeping the oceans safe from underwater bad guys with no real explaination of who exactly this guy is. The original, Orin, somehow turned into a squidman and was killed. It's getting cancelled in a few issues and I think it's going to be a long time before Aquaman is cool again.  

IN CONCLUSION

I’m a nerd’s nerd. The hottest words a chick could ever speak are “baby I got your comic books for you.” My love of comic books is geeky enough to alienate me from the cool people but not sophisticated enough for the elitist fan boys. I may die never hearing those beautiful words spoken to me from my wife the Hooters waitress but I continue to feed my habit so stay tuned for my chronicles into the wonderful world comics…