The Moneyball Approach To Pretty Vacant

Gigi's Fastball Special!

Moneyball came out this month and it’s brilliant: a movie with good acting and great writing concerning my favorite sport!  Brad Pitt stars as Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A’s who fielded a winning baseball club in 2002 by evaluating talent and player’s statistics using unorthodox methods.



Knowing his team couldn’t buy good players via free agency like the super-rich New York Yankees, Beane focused on players who were overlooked but could contribute to a baseball team in different (and cheaper) ways.  He realized that while home runs may be exciting, unassuming bases on balls could be just as effective.

In the same vein, Mike made more money than me at the Bare Bones Studio booth during this year’s Comic-Con. Yet a closer look at the numbers reveals that Mike made most of his money selling t-shirts, not off Pocketbook Heroes #3, his studio's latest comic.  PH #3 has not yet covered the cost of its print run.  Pretty Vacant: Final Repose Part I did sell out, covering its print run and part of the booth cost as well. It didn't happen with flashing neon signs or expensive ads, but by simply and quickly explaining the book’s premise to potential readers (and a little assistance from Mike and his "stickmen").

Moneyball isn’t really about baseball, and Pretty Vacant isn’t really just a comic book about a young woman trying to avoid a plastinated fate (remember it was originally a movie script).  Both are really about being creative over giving up.  Zigging where most will zag.  IMHO Pretty Vacant is still a killer movie disguised as a comic book, but if it wasn't reinvented from celluloid to paper, there would have been no Gigi character, no re-acquaintance with old friends (Mike, Rob, Sandra, Carlos etc.) and no blog!

It’s not perfect. Oakland did not win the World Series that year and DC Comic’s latest, Justice League #1, has sold over 200,000 copies more than Pretty Vacant: Final Repose Part I.  All we’ve done was convince people that insiders do not keep an iron grasp on building a baseball contender or creating an entertaining read.

And since DC raised the prices of their comics to four dollars per issue, maybe I can do that with Pretty Vacant: Final Repose Part II next year.

What Are Words For, When No One Listens Anymore?

It’s been over two years since I blogged about lettering in comics. Unfortunately, it’s still the same today. Nobody cares when it’s good, and everyone notices when it’s bad.

Normal comic book pages (unless you’re in Japan) read left-to-right, top-to-bottom. When James got my script for Pretty Vacant: Final Repose Part I, he decided to spruce up Page One to grab the reader (as if Gigi being sedated via injection-by-needle wasn’t attention grabbing enough!). James spruced it up all right, but he placed the second-to-last panel directly above the last:

How is the reader supposed to follow the story when the sequence is challenging? If you remember my post regarding conversations I’ve had with Neal Adams, controlling the eye is key for a comics page. In this case I carefully positioned word balloons which guide the reader to the correct panel:

I don’t mean for this post to be a tutorial, and I certainly hope it doesn’t come off as a rant. Sometimes you just have to make things work. Sometimes it even turns out for the best!

Kudos to you if you remember the song that had the lyric in this post’s title!