Post by Monkey_Feyerabend on Mar 6, 2019 12:07:05 GMT
I once sent a mail to Freddy Milton to tell him how I liked one of his stories. He kindly answered me, mostly to manifest his surprise in receiving a message from a duck fan. The same happened when I left a comment on deviant art to Carlos Mota, telling him that I once read one of his stories, which he said he had even forgotten to have drawn. Many artists are on facebook and twitter of course, more or less active. For instance, Artibani and Faraci are some kind of 'twitter celebrities' within the Italian comics community, you can interact with them there if you speak Italian; the former is a funny guy, gently trolly; the latter can be less friendly. Many artists take commissions of course, even if I cannot imagine how expensive a painting by Mottura is...but yep, you can easily contact him on facebook and get that.
In general it is good policy not to contact people, unless it is like just once and for good reason. Also, not expect people to answer you, as they have their life going on. And if they do answer, out of kindness, do not expect to create a continuous dialogue. It may be invasive of other people's life. This is common sense, but better underline it. When you are a fan you can be blinded by your passion and behave inappropriately, even if not intentionally.
I somehow also feel the need to write down clearly that, NO, you should not call Keno Rosa on the phone.
I once sent a mail to Freddy Milton to tell him how I liked one of his stories. He kindly answered me, mostly to manifest his surprise in receiving a message from a duck fan. The same happened when I left a comment on deviant art to Carlos Mota, telling him that I once read one of his stories, which he said he had even forgotten to have drawn. Many artists are on facebook and twitter of course, more or less active. For instance, Artibani and Faraci are some kind of 'twitter celebrities' within the Italian comics community, you can interact with them there if you speak Italian; the former is a funny guy, gently trolly; the latter can be less friendly. Many artists take commissions of course, even if I cannot imagine how expensive a painting by Mottura is...but yep, you can easily contact him on facebook and get that.
In general it is good policy not to contact people, unless it is like just once and for good reason. Also, not expect people to answer you, as they have their life going on. And if they do answer, out of kindness, do not expect to create a continuous dialogue. It may be invasive of other people's life. This is common sense, but better underline it. When you are a fan you can be blinded by your passion and behave inappropriately, even if not intentionally.
I somehow also feel the need to write down clearly that, NO, you should not call Keno Rosa on the phone.
I've had a short interaction with Artibani, although I'm a bit hindered because I don't speak Italian! I should look out for Faraci I guess. I wonder if either of them would be up for answering some interview questions for the online fanzine I mentioned above?
I've had a short interaction with Artibani, although I'm a bit hindered because I don't speak Italian! I should look out for Faraci I guess. I wonder if either of them would be up for answering some interview questions for the online fanzine I mentioned above?
You can always try, but they may decline. Also, I do not know to what extent they can write in English. I would try Artibani first, he bites less. I guess that I can help you with the Italian if you need, you can write me in pm whenever you want.
Artibani does not seem to like interviews and comicons/comics festivals appearances, or at least he likes to mock all that in his posts on fb and twitter. He also refused the 'papersera prize', an annual award that the Italian fandom gives to a Disney comics creator, in the form of a book with essays on the winner by the fans. Artibani writes on that forum from time to time, but he is not very sympathetic with the attitude of most of the fandom, so he basically considered hypocritical to accept the award. To give you an idea, even Don Rosa ten years ago accepted and went to Italy for the dinner with the forum community where he received the award.
Faraci is even harder to catch. He is an influent figure, he writes novels, comics and songs. He's more of a celebrity, in his little coin. Hard to imagine him answering to a little online fanzine. But maybe he is cool with that.
Once upon a time, a million years ago, it was standard practice to just cold call our heroes if they had a publicly listed number. If I hadn't done that, I wouldn't have reached Bill Melendez, Arnold Stang, Jack Tillar, Ralph Bakshi, and a slew of others I interviewed for various books and projects. That's how the world works - you actually talk to people! If an individual didn't want their contact information in public, then they went unlisted. Simple as that.
So it's embarrassing that you're "uncomfortable"—and a real indictment of the modern "fan" community—with a link to public information in public. Just saying.
Once upon a time, a million years ago, it was standard practice to just cold call our heroes if they had a publicly listed number. If I hadn't done that, I wouldn't have reached Bill Melendez, Arnold Stang, Jack Tillar, Ralph Bakshi, and a slew of others I interviewed for various books and projects. That's how the world works - you actually talk to people! If an individual didn't want their contact information in public, then they went unlisted. Simple as that.
So it's embarrassing that you're "uncomfortable"—and a real indictment of the modern "fan" community—with a link to public information in public. Just saying.
That's one way to look at it, but I'd argue it's also that being a fan is much less of a niché thing. Don Rosa tried to keep doing the old way, to answer fan mail like Carl Barks used to do; but the difference is that Don Rosa has at this point thousands of fans in a dozen countries, while only a bare few of the people who liked Duck comics in the 1960's and 1970's even knew Barks's name. As he eventually realized and posted about on his Facebook page, Rosa just plain doesn't have the time anymore to answer to fanmail personally. And he had to come out and say it, but I think we fans all know it — there's too many of us now, there's fan overpopulation, and creators' time becomes scarce as a result, and you're afraid that you'll just waste their time repeating stuff they've heard a hundred times before if you try and phone.
If an individual didn't want their contact information in public, then they went unlisted. Simple as that.
Also, with the advent of the internet and the proliferation of unscrupulous websites that profit off listing and selling personal information ... completely legal in the US, apparently ... being "listed" doesn't mean an invitation to be contacted.
Yeah, just look up any interview with Rosa and you'll get a general idea of why not to call this guy. He lives an extremely reclusive life, and is known for being rude/grouchy towards fans (just ask anyone who ever dared to compare his work to "DuckTales"--if they even lived to tell the tale ). No way he's gonna appreciate a stranger calling him at his home. The reason he's in the white pages is because there are relatively few fans of his living in the US.
So it's embarrassing that you're "uncomfortable"—and a real indictment of the modern "fan" community—with a link to public information in public. Just saying.
Come on, you know that there is a difference between a) one single fan of Rosa that goes on the white pages searching for his number and calls him to tell "hi, I like your comics!"; b) publishing his phone number in a forum where there is and there will be in the coming years tons (potentially hundreds and hundreds) of people that can be inspired in calling him just because someone put the number under their nose.
It is not an indictment of the modern "fan" community, according to me. It is at most an indictment of how powerfully annoying the most annoying part of a fan base can become in the era of internet. Potentially annoying people always existed, only they could not easily harass a guy back when there was only the phone and the fax machine.
Also, in a forum where I cannot write WAK the WAK*, censoring a private number is the less I expect.
Once upon a time, a million years ago, it was standard practice to just cold call our heroes if they had a publicly listed number. If I hadn't done that, I wouldn't have reached Bill Melendez, Arnold Stang, Jack Tillar, Ralph Bakshi, and a slew of others I interviewed for various books and projects. That's how the world works - you actually talk to people! If an individual didn't want their contact information in public, then they went unlisted. Simple as that.
So it's embarrassing that you're "uncomfortable"—and a real indictment of the modern "fan" community—with a link to public information in public. Just saying.
All those cases you were a single writer with a specific job in mind.
What you instead did was place his number in wide availability to hundreds of fans who often won't have as big a notion of personal space and privacy whether due to being children or just, as is more common in modern internet, not as well-adjusted socially, if you catch my drift.
It's all nice and dandy to be thinking like we're living in the 1980s but this is an era where people will call the police saying "someone's killing someone in this address" so they can watch the person being attacked by SWAT live.
I'm not having personal information like that displayed in this forum.
Once upon a time, a million years ago, it was standard practice to just cold call our heroes if they had a publicly listed number. If I hadn't done that, I wouldn't have reached Bill Melendez, Arnold Stang, Jack Tillar, Ralph Bakshi, and a slew of others I interviewed for various books and projects. That's how the world works - you actually talk to people! If an individual didn't want their contact information in public, then they went unlisted. Simple as that.
So it's embarrassing that you're "uncomfortable"—and a real indictment of the modern "fan" community—with a link to public information in public. Just saying.
All those cases you were a single writer with a specific job in mind.
What you instead did was place his number in wide availability to hundreds of fans who often won't have as big a notion of personal space and privacy whether due to being children or just, as is more common in modern internet, not as well-adjusted socially, if you catch my drift.
It's all nice and dandy to be thinking like we're living in the 1980s but this is an era where people will call the police saying "someone's killing someone in this address" so they can watch the person being attacked by SWAT live.
I'm not having personal information like that displayed in this forum.
More power to you. You did the right thing. E-mail spam is one thing, not being able to have a phone anymore because you're constantly harassed is another thing entirely. I know relatives of mine in the US have this problem and it's basically impossible to reach them by phone anymore because of this.