An introduction, by Ben Peek
Who reads introductions?
Now, I'm not talking about introduction to books or collections. For some reason, I'm fascinated by anything that precedes a well-known author's work. Especially if it has been written by another famous author or somebody.
But what about magazines?
Or even better, online 'zines?
I have to be honest, when I say, not me. It's usually, "skip that", and go straight on to the content.
SHORT, SHARP LIE.
I slept with Salma Hayek, but only once.
WHICH BRINGS US TO POPIMAGE'S ONLINE COMICS.
It's all about entertaining, this introduction business.
So tilt your chair back, spin on it if it does, take a sip of something, turn that music to a comfortable level, and enjoy my company. I'll be entertaining, and maybe informative.
MECHANICS, PREVIOUS INTRODUCTIONS, AND HOW I GOT THIS JOB.
This is my third attempt at writing this introduction. The first one was quite different. The second didn't have anything to do with the first, but it started with my car. You see, my car had just been bounced on registration. The dreaded rust word was riddled through the mechanic's speech to me, and I used my emotional distress from that to present to you a full-fledged essay on why cars are drivable, even with rust. (Which, in case you're wondering about a car crash, well, let me point something out: If you're doing eighty down the street and you slam into another car, rust or no rust, you are fucked.) So that was that, and then I moved on to how I got this job.
Now, I didn't get this job for skill, or passing experience, or my ability to seduce people in Hollywood.
It'll probably amaze you to learn that when I was given this job, I didn't want it. Who, I ask you, would want to be the editor of a section for online comics? The idea made me shiver, made me shake my head, and say, "no no no no no." Except no one was listening to me. At the time, we were sitting in our jets -- about six or eight of us, I think -- and we were crossing oceans and chatting to each other about PopImage, while drinking fifteen-year-old whisky and acting like the decadent rich we are, and drunk, I said, "hey, maybe we should have an online comic?"
To which Scottie replied, "that's a good idea, Ben; you do it."
Which was kind of shocking, because when you suggest something like that, you expect people to say, well, maybe, but what type of comic? And who would we get to draw it? And who would write it? And you know, it seems like a lot of work, who wants it?
To which, in all honesty, I would have kept my mouth shut and someone else could have dealt with it.
But no.
Scottie said, "that's a good idea, Ben; you do it."
So suddenly I'm lumped with the PopImage Comic -- and it was only a comic strip then, six panels a month in my mind, I shit you not -- and lumped with this, I thought, "what am I going to do?"
Nothing.
Let it stay as it is.
No one expects anything from an online comic strip, right?
Right. So I'll just get someone and we'll do a small little bit of fun -- poke fun at comic fanboys or something -- and that, folks, was my plan. I sat back in my chair, congratulated myself of a hard job well evaded. And then it hit me. And I thought:
THE PULPS ARE DEAD.
Yeah.
That's what I thought.
Cheap entertainment is dead, gone, no more. The only real fun you can have for free these days is sex, but you can pay for that in more ways than one if you're not careful. And I've seen people talk about the pulps, in those sighing tones of nostalgia that make me wish for a time machine to go galloping around in, seeing things like that, and hoping that they're as good as they're told.
Which I know they aren't. I mean, when I think of the pulps, I get a whole array of imagery that's probably not quite right. I see dark, quiet streets with old, sexy cars parked on the side, or rolling down a smooth street; a place where cigarettes looked cool in the right mouth; where the bright rooms held men in suits and women in gowns, and in other, darker rooms, Al Capone might just be Robert De Niro with a baseball bat beating the back of a man's head a bloody red; and outside those rooms, men ran liquor behind the eyes of cops, and their might even have been strong and positive feelings about a country ... and beyond that, I see badly produced magazines, full of writers and their stories ... or cheap comics with more gusto and wildness that is proper these days. These are the things I see, and it matters not that the price back then was a good bit of money. What matters is that I can sigh and think with the nostalgia of someone who has never been there, that it must have been worth the money because almost anything is worth twenty cents.
And then I thought, you know what else, a pulp era is happening right beneath our noses. The pulps of magazines and comics and such are dead, just as Al Capone can only be bought to life now by De Niro. But there is a new pulps -- a cheap form of entertainment, a free form, existing on the 'net. It is, in fact, the 'net. Look around. Stories, comics, movies, all these things being done on the 'net with a big grin and love for what they do, without much of a worry for cash. A time will come when we'll look back at the 'net, and say it was great ... and this'll be right before AVSs go everywhere, you have to pay to see your hotmail, and Demi Moore has a live feed into her bedroom for everyone to watch for only fifty bucks a month. And so all that went through my mind.
And then I said, "you know, I'm the editor ... "
And suddenly this wasn't a six-panel comic any more.
Suddenly I was here with grand plans, using my power as an Editor for good. And that's basically what I'm aiming to do here at PopImage Comics: to bring you comics that's worth the cost, that entertains, that breaks the boundaries, that sets a standard, and that makes you say to your friends, "hey, look at this site me, it's fucking great."
ANOTHER SHORT, SHARP LIE.
I slept with Leonardo DiCaprio. He's awful.
WHICH BRINGS US TO THE END.
So, welcome.
The types of comics we're going to bring to you are going to range from short, one-update stories to longer, limited runs. We will also be bringing you differing genres: humour, romance, action, and anything that breaks those rules. There is no one type of comic that you will find here.
With that, the first title we're bringing you is BOONDOGGLE, written and illustrated by Steve Stegelin. This is the work of a comic professional, and it's up now, and it's free. It's a wonderful start to our run, and we hope that Steve will be back again in the future.
And in a month's time, we will debut RUST, written by Alasdair Watson and illustrated by Dan Goodbrey. It's an amazing work, and more than that, it will change how you look at online comics forever.
And that, folks, is that.
Introduction complete.
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