Monday, February 26, 2018

J.M. Matthews, Great Manga Works, and the Hiatuses That Plague Some of Them...

Well, someone on a message board said something about my End Times franchise's popularity online that really awoke in me to the reality of End Time's online popularity. The person said something to the effect of "J.M. Matthews is such a slacker. He's so lazy and his entire career is made of hiatuses, but, we all know that if he ever tweets or updates his webcomic with new material, it will shoot to the top of the Webcomics List top 500-600, Twitter Top 5, and Comic Fury Number 5-1 on their Bestseller and Highest Ratings Lists and eventually the Amazon bestseller list. It wasn't in those exact words, but the implication was thick enough. That's fascinating to me. Whatever material of End Times I do finish will be a chart topper.

No matter how long I wait, and no matter how little talent or work ethic I might have, no matter how long m hiatus, it will still reach The #1 Sales Spot on Twitter, Webcomics List, Comic Fury, and Amazon. It just being there is guaranteed the Top Spot on the Charts. Yay! Yes! It's branded! That means End Times is now a Brand. People will seek it out as long as I'm doing new design and story material for the world.

I owe my readership an apology. I need to apologize for the bulk of my working career being made of hiatuses. While I meet my Journal deadline, I realize when it comes to the End Times universe and schedule, despite my comic being massively popular, I know some of you have really been burned by all my hiatuses and delays. I'm going to do my best to work really hard to fix this problem if I get settled into my new place. I'll finally have a quiet place to work and focus my efforts, and once I'm settled in, assuming nothing or no one ruins everything, production should pick back up. The in-laws and I were a bad living mix, but until now I haven't had any options to leave the house to work somewhere else more quiet and peaceful, but it looks like that might change. I don't want to jinx myself, but things are looking up. And a more intense work schedule is highly likely. But I underestimated the damaging power of laziness, exhaustion, and fatigue that goes with being burnt out by an intense work schedule. Despite your best intentions and best efforts, you still get held back by laziness fatigue or whatever, despite constantly having the top spot on the charts, something can always get in the way, because despite it's social influence and power, comics making and manga-cartooning is still a delicate process. Even the Japanese workaholic culture of Japanese manga can get caught up in some malaise when it's only one person responsible for the whole thing. Even the likes of such hardworking Japanese comic book superstars as Toshihiro Togashi and Kentaro Miura are famous for their malaise, delays, hiatuses, and getting overwhelmed by the intense schedule of keeping up with their own comics and manga work. I didn't realize that not all Japanese creators made their schedules and deadlines on time and had to take long periods of time off just like me until later in my career. It wasn't until I was 27 or so when I first learned who Kentaro Miura and Toshihiro Togashi were and that they'd almost become more famous for DELAYING Their work than the fame of their work itself (Berserk, Yu Yu Hakusho, Hunter X Hunter). I wasn't so much delaying work as it was waiting for an opportunity to focus and resume maintaining my efforts like I had been in my 20s. Still, even in my 20s, I still vividly remember being depressed as hell about not being able to do MORE, MORE WORK and ENERGY in my career. I remember being so intimidated by the intensity of the market colliding with my own draining energies, and how people just always relentlessly and tirelessly demanded more stories. But now I'm in my 30s, and I haven't drawn active story-based pages (and not just something unplanned and random) since at least 2012. That was 5 whole years ago when I was 29 years old. The last age I did active new work was the age of 29. I'm 34 now. Something needs to be fixed. I'm sick of disappointing people, but at the same time, people watch me with such intensity. I know a 5-year wait may not be 10 or 15 years like some creators, but it's been long enough! It's time. Time to get back into the swing of things, and resume work on my magnum opus. I ask for just a little bit more patience from my readership, then maybe things can return to "normal", or at least me working again.  

Friday, February 16, 2018

The Tunnel of 1-Star Reviews

Customer Reviews

Customer Reviews for your books are listed below. Try the sorting options to find the view that works for you, or select a book title to see just that book's reviews. Recent reviews may take 1-2 days to appear in Author Central. Learn More
Let us know what you think of this new feature! Give us feedback
Page 1 of 1 (3 items) from: All Books
View: Short | Full Sort by: 
1. 
 One Star July 29, 2015
I never received the product.
2. 
 Truly Bad June 12, 2015
I borrowed this for free through the Prime lending library. I've seen some poorly edited books but this is by far the worst. It's obvious from the first page that the author never spell checked his work. Compound words created becausethe author forgotto hit the spacebar are everywhere. Dialog is often not in quotes. Whole paragraphs are but quite often not dialog. Words are randomly capitalized; after commas, in the middle of sentences, common nouns.
The writing itself is. . . bad. I'm honestly at a loss for words trying to describe how to describe just how bad this really is.
A small sample of the narrative:

*He Temple first thing, second thing he thought was "Would began walking towards the front door, trying to seem full of good will and cheer, even though he was a salesman He knocked on the front door. It echoed throughout the Temple and the air in the parking lot, at a great distance.*

That's from the first page and first story. A story about a salesman who approaches a temple of monks to sell said monks life insurance and then, for no discernable reason, asks joins the monk's order but would rather have money. The end. That's the entire story.

The rest of the writing is just as bad. The comics look like the doodles junior high school students make in their notebooks while they're not paying attention in their English class.

In conclusion? This is horrible, some of the worst writing I've seen. If it weren't for the ease with which people can self publish these days the only people who would have been subjected to this authors writing would have been his parents, friends and the occasional unfortunate teacher. Avoid this.Show Less
3. 
1 of 1 people found the following helpful
 Matthews End Times is a disappointing amateurish effort with a non-starter of a story April 15, 2015
I'm reluctant to provide really negative feedback to authors, but this just seems like someone was bored at lunch, quickly drew some stuff and thought, hey, I wonder if I can make this into a book. With the caveat that I don't read a lot of magna and some who are more immersed in that genre may find some redeeming qualities, this just simply looks like lazy work. Not "on-the-edge cool and raw" but just lazy. Now let's get to the story, or lack thereof. There just isn't a story here. The book's main benefits are no additional cost (I grabbed this through Kindle Unlimited) and the actual story is quite brief so you don't lose much time with it.

Also, I'm not sure why the author includes "The Anthology" in the title but this isn't an anthology.Show Less


Saturday, February 10, 2018

Thursday, February 8, 2018

Hands down, the best PM I ever got on LinkedIn: Shinichiro Ishikawa (Studio Gonzo)

Here is my favorite PM I ever got of all time:

Dear J.M. 


Thank you for your interest in me and our products! It is always a great surprise that people elsewhere in the world could be connected through what we create. Whenever you have a chance to come to Tokyo, please do not hesitate to contact me again! 


Best regards, 

Shin (Ishikawa)

[Shinichiro Ishikawa is one of the founders of Studio Gonzo]


THIS Shinichiro Ishikawa (Link)

But normally, I don't network and tell....But I'll make an exception this time...

Anime and manga isn't about bragging on the designers, screenwriters or executives you know in Japan It's about putting your budget where your mouth is!

But then again, I'm not really Japanese anime. Or am I? heh heh.

End Times and Others, Comics Production Map....

End Times is now a Business for me. And that Business has a production-preproduction and publishing-distribution process. A very convoluted one. But I didn't initially plan my production and distribution process to be so convoluted and complex.
There's:
  • Writing
  • Drawing
  • Webcomics
  • Publishing
Writing:
Brainstorming, Daydreaming, Plots, Stories, Concept, Cartoon Scripts, Story Arcs
Drawing:
Concept Art, Concept Character Design, Production Design, World Building, Sketching out the Art, Comics Page Drafting, Pencilling, Inking, Ink Sketching, Digital Silhouettes. Compositions of Comics Pages, Lettering and speech bubbles.
Webcomics:
Scanning, File Management, Browsing, Uploading, Upload Naming and Description Writing, Fanbase, Responding to Fans, Deviant Art, Comic Fury. Blogger, Twitter, Promotional PR Tweets, Tweeting Uploads and Updates.
Publishing:

Lulu, Amazon, Kindle, Uploading, Dashboard on Publishing Sites, Marketing, Profits, Publishing Houses, International Editions, Advertising, Budgets, Twitter, 

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Here's My Defining Power Events. What Are Yours??

My Defining Power Moments:
  • Cairo
  • Egypt
  • The Arab Spring
  • The 2 Terms of Barack Obama
  • Google Is The Most Visited Site in the World
  • YouTube 2005 – 2006, sold to Google for $1.6 Billion
  • ActionToonTV
  • End Times
  • Social Media and Twitter Revolution
  • I'm the Most Powerful Man on Twitter
  • Popularizing Anime and Manga
  • Popularizing Japanese and French Co-Productions
  • End Times is the #1 Bestselling Kindle Manga on Amazon
  • 10 Million Ad Impressions
  • The Launch of CN, Adult Swim, and Toonami
  • Gorillaz – Clint Eastwood
  • The Legend of Zelda: Link
  • The Fall of Bryan Johnston
  • Adult Swim Message Boards
  • Being Related to Thomas Merton, Luke, and William The Conqueror
  • Jeff Bezos becoming richer than Bill Gates on the Rich List
  • Helping make Stanford the Top Rated School in the Country
  • Mainstreamizing Smartphones
  • 9/11
  • Nostalgia
  • Apocalypse
  • Working with David Seuss
  • Collaboration on a Bandes Dessinee book
  • Friendship with Yoshitoshi Abe and Thomas Romain