INTRO - Comics and Artificial Intelligence
I have now gotten the exact same type of cold two months in a row. I’m beginning to suspect that it is some kind of conspiracy by my enemies to destroy me. If I get sick again at the end of this month, we’ll know for sure.
Expanding further on some topics I touched on in the last newsletter, I want to talk a little about being an indie creator in the current social media landscape. I don’t do a lot of “hot takes” on social media, but I might offer some here…
Several weeks ago, news broke that football star and social activist, Colin Kaepernick, was promoting a new Comic Book Artificial Intelligence start up company called Lumi. A lot of the promotion made frequent use of the standard buzz words and rhetoric surrounding AI as it is used for art. The new technology would “democratize art” and “remove gatekeepers” and “make creation accessible to everyone.”
All those hollow buzz words really get my hackles up, and apparently I’m not the only one because the news of this new company was met with near universal disdain from the artistic and comic community.
While I think that AI technology will eventually find its place in the artistic world, I do get sick of people touting it as a method for “creating” art. In order for that to happen, I think copyright laws are going to have to be reexamined and possibly rewritten. As it stands, artists have certain rights when it comes to who can copy an image that they produce. If an AI program has been trained to copy pieces of art without the artists permission, then that makes the use of the technology unethical and illegal. But in the digital age, these kinds of copyright laws are practically impossible to enforce. The laws may be on the books, but a law is only as good as its ability to be enforced (and big tech start up companies know that). The music and film industries have been aware of this for a few decades, now, and have basically given up trying to stop pirating.
Personally, I think copyright law is long overdue for a drastic overhaul. Admittedly, I am more of a copyright anarchist when it comes to art. Copyright law can just as easily be used as a cudgel by a corporation to silence a competitor as it can be used to protect a single creator’s work. I also think it’s one of the biggest contributing factors to the homogenization and stagnation of American pop culture, but that might be a topic for a different newsletter.
My biggest concern with AI as it is used for art, apart from the dubious methods used to train the programs, is that it will never live up to the purported hype. I see a lot of interest in AI from people that seem to have little to no creative bones in their body.
I looked into Kaepernick’s new company, Lumi, beyond the initial headline and it appears to be a bit more than just an AI comic generator. Lumi is setting itself up to be a new kind of publisher for independent creators, which I am admittedly interested in.
Creating a profitable comics publisher is extremely difficult. At this point it doesn’t appear that Lumi is going to do anything interesting or groundbreaking in the area of publishing apart from offering AI tools to generate a comic book, which makes it look like a scam by and for people that know absolutely nothing about the comic book industry.
Let me be clear about something, I am not interested in reading anybody’s AI generated comic. I do not WANT it to become easier for the average person to tell their story. I do not think the average person has anything interesting to say. I am not one of those persons who think artists HAVE to suffer for their art, but I do think learning a craft and working within the best of your abilities is what makes it art. Spitting a few sentences into a machine algorithm so it can spew out a mishmash combination of the same several artists that all AI programs have been trained on is not art. It is the antithesis of art. If you thought pop culture was a generic homogenized mess before, just wait until everything looks like it came from the same AI program. We will be reaching new levels of the Uncanny Valley effect.
But, as I alluded to earlier, the algorithm demands content, and it doesn’t need to be thoughtful or challenging or even sincere. It just needs to be, and that’s what we are going to get with a deluge of oncoming AI content.
It’s all the more frustrating, because I can envision a useful version of AI. As an indie creator, I do not need a machine to generate content for me. I generate my own content with the skills I have honed over the years of studying comics.
If you want to democratize art or remove gatekeepers, then you can start with the predatory social media algorithms that bury, hide, and otherwise prevent people from seeing my work. It is no secret that Facebook’s algorithm buries posts that contain links to other websites, making it difficult to promote crowd funding campaigns or even just regular things like your digital store or public appearances. Twitter (X) has been shown time and again to shadowban users and certain trending hashtags. I do not need a machine to make art for me, I need the machine to stop insisting that I work with it in order to be seen all while doing everything in its power to bury me.
One of the main reasons I set up this Patreon was to have some kind of social media outlet, some kind of link to the digital world, no matter how small it is. I have grown increasingly dissatisfied with all current social media programs, and it’s possible that I just quit them altogether (2024 being an election year makes it all that much easier). But I recognize the importance and need to have an outlet for your voice in the digital landscape.
So, thank you for subscribing, this is definitely going to be the best place to hear from me and my comics in the future.
Okay, let’s talk about some upcoming comic projects!
First, I guess I should announce my upcoming convention appearances. On September 7th, I will be at Free State Comicon in Lawrence, KS and on October 26th I will be at SLICE in St. Louis (representing the Fantasy Books & Games table).
American Chop Suey comes out this month on Sept. 25th! We are having a signing at Fantasy Books and Games on Saturday, Sept. 28th. Both Ed Bickford and myself will be there, so if you are in the St. Louis area, swing by and say hi!
We have a launch date for the HamletMania Kickstarter...October 16th! I think this is a really great comic and something unlike a lot of the other comics I’ve written up to this point. Greg McCrary and I had a lot of fun putting it together and we can’t wait to get it printed.
My Atomic Nazi Smasher zine is finished and printed! Like my Bizarro Hulk zine, it is $5 for a five page story that unfolds into a poster for the final page. Paul Little colored the final page and he did a whizz-bang job if I ever saw one!
COMIC RECOMMENDATIONS
If you watch my weekly comic preview livestream ( twitch.tv/fantasybooksinc ), you have undoubtedly heard me gush about Skybound’s new Energon Universe, particularly Transformers by Daniel Warren Johnson(henceforth to be referred to as DWJ) and G.I. Joe by are variety of creators, notably Joshua Williamson and Tom Reilly.
You can read my extended thoughts about the new Transformers and G.I. Joe comics over at my Patreon for free!
Thanks for reading!
-Aaron