Hipster? Want To Write A Book Or University Paper On Comics...My Response

Ahhh. Early morning and Terry has already been a bastard.  "What? How? Why??" you all scream.  Let me tell you.

Every year, several times, I get emails from university students who are putting together papers on comics.

Now, it works this way: in university papers you are supposed to acknowledge and thank your sources -if you were a professor or lecturer at a university and did not do so you used to be considered lower than the low.  This was reiterated to me by people from Swansea university in Wales re. wildlife and so I helped and supplied knowledge, reference works and so on.  Thirty plus years of knowledge given them. They then seem to have decided not to bother.  A lot of my reference books and papers on loan have never been returned.

For me that really was the final straw as I had put complete faith in their word and professional standing.

The same thing has happened (except that I NEVER loan out anything any more) with students and comics theses/papers.  It all goes online so checking I see all the info there as "original research" and no credit to me.

The last one who contacted me I suggested a trawl of the internet and looking for reference books might be a good idea as I had no interest in being an uncredited source and longer.  Never got back to me.  Odd.

I have been looking for information on UK Platinum/Golden & Silver Ages artists/writers since the 1970s.  William A. Ward had one short paragraph about his work that anyone and everyone used to prove they "knew" about old comics.  I managed to gather quite a lot of information on Ward and his work so when, must be three years ago now, I was contacted by two authors who were publishing a book on comics through a named publisher.  They had "tried and tried but only hit dead ends" regarding Ward. Well, as other "comic historians" (pfah) had only the usual response of "We know nothing!" they were advised to contact me.

At the time I was not thinking about a credit in a book. I was thinking that this was an opportunity to get Ward and his work more recognition.  So I sent off what I had.  I got a big "thank you" as "this is basically 99% more than we already had!"

Six months. Nothing.  A year -nothing.  I wanted to get a publication date so contacted one of the named authors -no reply.  The second one did respond a while later and told me in a "Oh, you know, we tried this but lost interest" attitude that they had not yet found a publisher.  But I was told they had a publisher!

That drew the line, crossed it and then erased it  (that makes sense if you think about it).

So, some hipster emails me and explains that "comic geeks  are big business at the moment" and that he and his girlfriend ("We were inspired by that Avengers movie" -I or II?) were, like, heavily into comics and were working on a major book on comics.  Could I send them all I had on the UK Golden Age of the 1960s and creators with some art?  The stress of forcing myself not to reply "FRO"...wow.  The UK Golden Age has nothing to do with the 1960s....there are so many things...anger suppressed.

"I would suggest you check the internet for a definition of the various "Ages" of UK comics and information on them -also buy a few book"

Bitch slapped.

I do not do this any more.

Decades of research -whether wildlife, "mystery" or comics- is not given away. And, yes, I have suggested my own books as references.

If you are going to write a paper or book about comics because it is trendy then get in line.  But for goodness sakes do research of your own.  I know the internet has become the go-to source for students and authors these days -hey, the number of times I've seen UK 'comic experts' quote items from my blogs (original info that I came across) as their own work...shameful.

Just making it all clear.  Flattering does NOT work with me.  Pay for the work or do your own.

Now, off to waste time waiting for the boiler engineer.