A Distant Soil by Colleen Doran

I drew and drew and drew and drew, and it looks like I didn’t accomplish very much the last couple of days. I don’t know how that happens, and I am a little down about it. I took in a lot of coffee to stay alert today, and now am too wired to sleep. I guess I should just keep drawing then. Maybe in a few more hours the pages will look like something got accomplished.

In the meantime, go read some links.

Rich Johnston is following the strange tale of a fraudster who has been passing himself off as various noted comics artists, taking advances on work, and running off with the dough. This scam has been going on for months and months. The story of Josh Hoopes started at Rich’s old Lying in the Gutters column, but is now continued at Bleeding Cool. (And if you missed my earlier post about fraudsters, go back and read it now.) LINK FIXED.

Impersonating comics creators is not new (it’s happened to me) but Josh Hoopes excels at this scam. You can see his face here.

Publishing companies should always do an internet search and contact creators directly before contracting with them. Almost every creator has an internet presence and it is not difficult to contact them or their official representatives.

How this dude managed to convince people he was a penniless Art Adams looking for dough, I cannot fathom. I know what Adams’s original art goes for! Man, all he has to do is a pinup or two, and he’s set! No need for Adams to be working for chump change for small publishers!

Also at Bleeding Cool, the latest on the bizarre tale of Rick Olney, who does not appear to be any closer to paying the people he owes than years ago when he originally incurred his debts to artists and writers.

For some bizarre reason, I got the weirdest mail from Olney (whom I do not personally know) about my Very Bad Publishers posts. Olney convinced himself the posts were about him and his family. Here is the entire text of the letter which came in some time ago:

Colleen,
You made a remark about my father being a ‘bad’ businessman. My father was NEVER a bad businessman. He actually had a great business and had much more than you could ever realize or be willing to give him credit for. It was not until after his brain bleed and subsequent operation saving his life back in 1995 that his life began a slow decline. Your idiotic comments about my family are something you should be proud of. I’m going to tell you once, knock it off. Talk about your worldly theories about me all you like but leave my parents out of your crap slinging. I realize that you can’t help yourself It must be tough living a life of estrogen driven, dysfunctional personality psychosis, with overtones of jealousy and insecurity.

R

I have never worked with Olney, never known anyone in his family, and have not made comments about his family business, about which I know nothing. The Very Bad Publisher posts are clearly about my time at a company called Starblaze. I have no Earthly idea why this ridiculous Olney person would assume any of this material was directed at him, but then, this is not the first time some random nutter assumed I was speaking to them through the internet.

And me – jealous of Olney? Dude, what is he sniffing?

Olney followed up his bizarre email with another, alluding to the death of my cat last summer. Presumably, my talking dirt about his bad businessman father (which I did not do) resulted in the karmic backlash of the death of a 16-year-old cat.

I think my cat died of old age. He was 16 after all. And, of course, I said absolutely nothing about Olney’s father, his business, or anything else about the guy. I’ve never worked with him, Olney, or had any direct contact with anyone in his family whatsoever.

And what kind of karmic hoodoo kills an innocent animal over a blog post? Man, that’s messed up.

I used to try to be subtle on my internet postings, not naming too many names so as not to embarrass people from my past, while still writing candidly about my experiences.

It’s a wasted effort. There’s nothing I can do about Teh Crazy who thinks I am sending them secret messages through the computer, and ruining their poor little careers with my dispatches to the Sekrit Comic Book Industry Cabal.

There’s a couple more nutters out there who conflate the most tenuous connection (I spoke to them on the phone, I answered email, they met me at a show) in order to give them an ontological argument for why their lives suck: “Colleen was supposed to HELP my CAREER and now she won’t even talk to me except via SEKRIT MESSAGES on the INTERWUBZ.” Oh yeah, and I am STALKING them and out to GET them and a total HATER.

Jesus Christ. File right next to Olney and his weird karmic theory about my cat.

Fortunately, I don’t seem to have too many problems with Teh Crazy. I am not worried about this Olney person, either. But I thought you’d appreciate a direct illustration of the cognitive disconnect that occasionally darkens the corners of my happy life down on the farm.

The good news is, this sort of thing is extremely rare. With thousands of readers, I feel blessed that I have so few problems.

Count on fingers of one hand, have fingers left over.

Life is good. Really.

And I am happy to bring it to your attention so you can know what to look out for. When it comes to Very Bad Publishers, I don’t think you’re going to beat Rick Olney’s Tightlip. Do click the link and read.

There’s a part of me that feels a little better knowing I am not the only person who had to deal with a VERY bad Very Bad Publisher, while at the same time, I feel terrible for the creators who got rooked.

It’s never personal. Remember that. When you get involved with one of these creeps, or when you have some internet nutter railing about the Sekrit Cabal, just remember it happens to everybody in the bizz – well, the real pros anyway, as opposed to the resume-inflating wishtheywere’s who are sure the Sekrit Cabal stands between them and the riches and fame they deserve.

You did nothing to deserve Teh Crazy, and Neil Gaiman gets 437% more of this crap than you ever will.

And he seems OK.

In happier news, our good buddy Tom Stillwell has a new collection of his comic called Honor Brigade, and I have contributed a pinup. You can order Honor Brigade HERE

Also, Tom will be making a print of my pinup of Mystery Girl. The pinup will be available at Wizard World Chicago and ALL proceeds will go toward the medical costs of John Ostrander. If he makes this available via mail for some of the readers here, I will be sure to post the info. EDIT: See it here.

OK, now I have to work for 3 more hours to get this caffeine out of my system. Wish me luck.

c

PS: More trouble with the Dabel Brothers. Don’t really know much about that lot.

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