Tales of Syzpense #21
The Business of Creating panel and the first Halloween spinner rack of the season
For anyone in or near the Los Angeles area, I’ll be a guest on a panel put on by the Business of Creating folks and supported by the Writers Guild Foundation this coming Tuesday, October 3:
Please join Business of Creating in partnership with Second Home on Tuesday 03 October for our WGF-supported panel DEVELOPING AND PRODUCING PROJECTS: PITCHING YOUR PROJECT IN A LARGE IP AND REBOOT WORLD.
Topics will include:
Developing/producing projects while in the concept phase.
Developing/producing projects that have a script yet need additional pitch elements.
How to develop pitch elements for projects that aren’t based upon an IP.
Nuances of pitching IP projects, Reboots and Independent original projects.
Making Original content in an IP and Reboot world
Understanding differences between the roles of Development Execs and Producers.
How do Development and Financing work hand in hand
Negotiating creativity with practical financing
How much creative freedom can the creator really have? How to keep your creative vision throughout the entire process
What role do tax incentives play in having a successful pitch?
Negotiating creativity with practical financing
What is a back of napkin budget?
Who helps in the process of taking a script page and actually getting that physically filmed and budgeted?
…and more.
MODERATOR:
Jennifer Mangan-Writer/Producer, Beautiful Day Productions
PANELISTS:
Chris Ryall - EP (Locke & Key, Eve Stranger); Co-Owner & Publisher Syzygy Comics
Xavier Byers - Production Finance Executive, Netflix
Michael Fisk - Entertainment Exec. & Owner of Intermark Strategy & Consulting and Pangram Entertainment
Other panelists tbd
DATE: Tuesday 03 October 2023
TIME: 6:00 PM PST
LOCATION: Second Home
1370 N. St. Andrews Place
LA, CA 90028
PARKING: At your discretion: Second Home ($15), Street parking (mind the signs) or Target (across the street--check rates)
COST: Free! While events are free, a donation is greatly appreciated and helps to reduce our costs, keeping events free for everyone.
Sign up here. Tickets are free and—as Dana Gould often says on his podcast—worth it!
My plan is to stick around for a while for the post-show meet-up, so if you do attend, please come say hey after. I’ve not yet been to Second Home, a broad and open co-working space, but it looks great. Should be a fun event.
Halloween: The Season of the Spinner
I typically wait until the first weekend in October to start with any Halloween decorations but I did jump the gun on the spinner rack a little early, outfitting the office spinner with an array of horror-themed covers.
Much like with the Christmas covers, I try to not go with the overly obvious (filling it with, say, Batman: The Long Halloween covers. Although that series’ Tim Sale covers would look pretty great in any rack), avoiding comics with the holiday itself mentioned in the title. Luckily, there’ve been no shortage of great horror-themed covers released over the decades. Of late, I’ve been grabbing old 1970s Marvel and DC covers since most of those are new to me.
Some of Marvel’s 1970s horror comics were reprints of 1960s horror titles but that’s fine — at times, I like the ‘70s coloring better, and they’re sure more affordable than trying to track down the early Kirby monster comics. Not to mention ECs, which I’d love to use to populate the rack but they’re too wide to fit well, and they’re mostly too far out of reach. But I’m pretty happy with what I led off with here, and I have more than enough to fill the second rack and also have some leftovers to rotate in new books throughout the month.
So, more to come. A few of these, like the ARRGH! comic, are completely new to me in title and cover image, so feel free to suggest your favorites that I need to add to the stack, too.
Finally, I helped ring in artist David Mazzucchelli’s birthday a week ago with this look at 13 great images not pulled from his landmark Batman: Year One or Daredevil: Born Again stories, which was a real challenge for me not because I couldn’t find other great Mazz images—there are so many—but because those are both two of my all-time favorite comic storylines so I’m always hesitant to miss any chance to sing their praises, especially David’s work on both. But this felt like a better way to celebrate him, by looking at other images from across the breadth of his career. You can check them out here.