I Got a Letter from Adult Swim

...about four years ago.

One time I got a hand-written letter from Adult Swim. You know, the network that comes on Cartoon Network after ten at night and shows Family Guy and Futurama re-runs. Yeah! That network!

When Horsemen was being prepped for a cartoon series, Sam and I needed to get a real proposal together. Something that was really going to show these network execs how fucking awesome this show was, how hilarious its premise and unique characters are, and what utter feckless “tards” they would be if they didn’t take it on immediately following the proposal.

In the Spring of 2003, I had finagled my way into what was called a “pitch session” with a number of television networks, along with a few hundred other fine, talented, aspiring individuals, in New York. In fact, the meeting place was in a building directly next door to NYU’s Stern School of Business. I knew this only because a close friend of mine went/worked there. Anyway, I knew our presentation had to stand out. I knew I couldn’t just take our pilot script and a few additional scripts, toss them on their desk and say, “Give yourself like, forty-five minutes and call me. I promise you’ll love reading these.” Just doesn’t have that real flair we were looking for. Also, let’s review some of the stipulations of these “pitch sessions:”

- You can only talk to them for 3 minutes.
- You cannot give them your contact information.
- You cannot ask them for their contact information.

Of course, they only tell you that after you’ve paid and ridden the bus to get there, and then waited on line for a few hours before the event was supposed to begin. Makes the whole thing seem a little… stupid? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Especially when I was standing around with all these people who had scripts and cards and briefcases, and there I was in my jeans with a backpack full of Horsemen shit. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Sam and I wanted to make the pitch really stand out, so we knew we needed something everyone in television cannot create without: visual aids. We had our friend Jason Clements (who would someday draw the later “season” of our webcomic series in the end) whip up some concept sketches, which looked pretty great, considering they were from our heads without any visual references (we knew we wanted Sarcasm to be loosely based off me, but that was about it). Lechery (Cynicism, at the time) was named “Ben,” but based off the artist, visually. Arrogance looked nothing like Keenan, and Apathy looked… pretty much exactly as he did in the webcomic. Anyway, we thought we had something cool. Jason drew a few additional pictures of some supporting cast (Beelzebub, Satan, unused Adam & Eve, etc.) and some of the regular cast interacting (we did not have Azraphel yet), and we figured that’d be good enough. We sent those, and the scripts, to the Library of Congress for copyrighting.

At the “Pitch X-Change” as it was called, there were quite a few prominent networks present. At least, they seemed appealing to us. On the list to attend were:

- Comedy Central
- Spike TV
- The Howard Stern Production Company
- Cartoon Network
- HBO
- Nickelodean
- USA
(Notice how neither Cartoon Network, nor Adult Swim are on this list)

They ushered us in, gave us tickets with the names of the four companies we wanted to talk to, and set up a timetable around when we were to meet with them, and move on to the next one. It was sort of like “speed dating,” only it’s probably a little more emasculating and you’re as shameless as possible, pimping your creativity like a used car. I met up with Comedy Central first. A little daunting, but I remained confident in our guys to not sound like an idiot.

I walked up to the little table with their names and their company on it. Two guys were sitting at it, and they looked impatient and tired. Mind you, the event had just started and they had been inside already. I had the commute, the wait, the exposed truth about what was going to happen when I got inside. They probably had breakfast, at least. I dared not get it, for fear of losing my place in line, and these guys looked annoyed.

“Good morning! My name’s Sal, how’re you doing this morning?”
Deadpan looks.
“Thanks for agreeing to this whole thing. It’s a great opportunity.”
“You’ve got two minutes.”
“Fair enough.” I leapt into an extremely abridged version of what the overall “story” was about. I showed the pictures and explained their personalities, their origin, and how each episode would be set up. I planned to explain that there were at least four episodes already written, and we had more on the way. In the middle of the origin, one of them held up his hand.

“Listen kid, Comedy Central isn’t looking for animation. You want to know why South Park is so popular?”
“South Park is still popular?”
“South Park is popular because it’s topical. It’s the only show on TV that does what it does.”
“What exactly is that?”
“But other than South Park, Comedy Central doesn’t exactly… do animation.”
“So Drawn Together is what?”
“South Park works. This doesn’t. Next!”

Time was up. The guy behind me was already standing behind my chair. I thanked them for their time and left, completely devastated. I realized this whole thing was just some kind of bullshit mandatory service all these New York-based companies were involved with, and the company that organized it charged people a little over a hundred bucks to tell them their bad ideas to TV networks that really had no interest in making new shows, to begin with. Oh, and they had no problem being dicks about it. My interest in doing this waned, my enthusiasm more or less shot, and I still had tickets to three other tables.

To Be Continued….

No End In Sight

As we creep closer and closer to what could be construed as an "end" to this whole thing, I'm only reminded in much larger increments just how far we have to go to be "done." With what, you might ask?

We've got the first issue in production right now, with pages being churned out by Mike at a dauntingly expedient rate. What I just added might throw a wrench in his well-oiled, page-producing machine, as I have just requested the pages be inked as well. This is after a long, thoughtful period where I thought maybe... just maybe, I could ink the pages myself and save like, a million dollars. Turns out I wasted a lot of time, and have to wait much longer to have the same guy who offered to do it in the beginning, do it. But it looks like before Mike sends out the pages as "complete," he'll be inking them, too. This means the pages will be officially "done," when I get them.

Yes, it added a bit of extra expense to the whole thing, but it's really worth it. I wish I could show everyone the pages I've been getting. They're seriously better and better as this book rolls along. I talked to Dan (www.sketchtavern.com), and he's thrilled to do the cover for us. It'll take a couple of months for him to free up his schedule, but it looks like we're getting everything and everyone we want for this launch. Once the issue's 100% done with pencils, inks, shadows, letters, and covers, we'll hit up the independent publishers and see if they bite. We'll also be running independent ourselves in the meantime, which means you won't have to wait another year or so to read the first issue.

I've been really wanting to push things along and get the word out about the 'verse we're creating. Since we still don't have a website, I'm going to officially declare this blog the official site for Horsemen: The Four Jackasses of the Apocalypse... officially. You'll get news, info, and pictures when I can post them. This will have to do, for now. Beats having a Myspace page (www.myspace.com/the4jackasses), I'll tell you that.